Future perspective

By David Greenop
This paper is a fuller version of the note ‘The technological drivers of change for towns and cities’ used in briefing for the RICS Research Foundation programme investigating the implications of information and communication technologies for the built environment.

About the Person

Central to any discussion about the future is the individual; society is made up of differentiated individuals with a diversity of values, beliefs and needs. Each individual has a unique network of relationships with other individuals and the objects in the world around them. Each person sees themselves at the centre of their own web of influence. No two people exactly see or understand the world in the same way. Social interactions are about individuals establishing informal or formal contracts of understanding between each other. People ideally adopt lifestyles that maximise their individual happiness and minimises personal pain. Each individual will have a different perception of what is meant by ‘quality of life’.

Short Term

Internet via mobile phones: After the introduction in 2000 of General Packet Radio Services (GPRS), an enhancement to GSM, users will have the ‘Always ON Always Connected’ experience. By 2002 the average mobile phone will have more functionality, be easier to use and continually connected to the Internet using WAP.

Electronic purses: A variety of technology approaches will be available to move people away from low value physical money usage towards micro-payment transactions. Mobile phones, new generation smart credit cards are the two most likely technologies to be used.

Positioning & guidance: Knowing where you are, where others are and where to go will be assisted by GPS technology. This functionality will become widely and cheaply available on mobiles.

Medium Term

E-identity: The government will be assigning personal electronic signatures to everybody; these will eventually replace NI numbers, medical numbers, driving licence, and passport numbers. Some people will have small ID tags implanted under their skins; this makes life considerably easier in a complex and fast world.

Mobile 3G: The next generation of mobile phones (UMTS) offering high-speed data transfers and life video. The trend will be to put more functionality into the phone and offer additional service functionality, in particular e-commerce services. Many technologists believe that this will replace the personal computer as the principle way to access the Internet.

Smart Clothing: A range of new ‘Active’ fabrics will be available. Properties will include: fabrics return to original shape, controlled colour change and adaptation to temperature changes, perhaps even simple emotional changes. Expect thin electronic displays to be incorporated as fashion features.

Health monitoring: A variety of discreet personal body sensors, probably bionic, become available for wearing twenty-four hours of the day. The sensors will input to a personal health device and probably use the mobile phone to network to NHS on-line medical centres. A key development for an increasing health conscious and aging society.

Robotic Prostheses: Although mainly for medical use i.e. replacement of limbs, eyes or hearing there will some early commercial applications that enhance normal human senses and abilities.

Your Knowledge: Having what you need to know with you all the time. There will be two competing, but eventually convergent, technology approaches. Firstly the personal PDA that has considerable processing and storage capability, possibility combined with the mobile telephone. Secondly networked access to the electronic devices at home, work etc. that contain your information, software agents will organise and fetch the information you need.

Life-Style Management: This will become increasingly popular, as a means to manage the complex demands the modern living and working place on people. The new ICT technologies and services demand an individuals attention, solutions that reduce this and give people more time will be important.

Longer term

Personal E-implants: Although controversial most people will have some form of body implant. In some people this will involve pathways to brain centres and enable two-way intuitive communication and control. Linked with bionic devices drugs etc can be used for medical reasons as well as mood controllers and enhancers.

Body Networks: Three trends come together very strongly, the ever-smaller size of processing and communication devices, the development of bionic body interfaces and the availability everywhere of low power Pico-cell networks. The result is most people will wear either close to the skin or under their skins a complex arrangement of components that together form a body based network. Direct mind links to this network are likely.

Virtual Existence: The Real physical world will be mapped accurately into virtual electronic space. Individual’s actions in the Real world will be represented in the virtual world. The virtual world will appear as real or even more real that the Real world. Extensive use will be made of virtual reality technology that together with the body sensors and stimulators will give strong impressions of reality. As a result people will have a different sense of reality and will become multi-dimensional.

Personal Virtual Nets: The proliferation of smart autonomous devices around the everyday environment will require some networking structure. Personal Nets provide this structure, everything that belongs to you, including your personal information is networked together with your as the central controlling entity. This net is a highly reliable and personalised Ubiquitous Computing and Communication environment (UCC). Electronic agents move around this net helping you, and supporting and providing relationships to other people’s nets.

Personal extensions: Robotic Prostheses have developed further and are now seen, as natural extensions to the individual, be able to do things that were normally beyond the possibility of the ordinary individual. Science fiction has called these individuals Cyborgs, in a sense this is what we have become, however of much of the developments involve new bionic materials

In The Home

The word ‘home’ implies much more than a building at a particular physical location. Home summons up feelings of family, comfort, safety etc. How individuals relate to each other within the home environment is important for understanding how the new ICT technologies will actually be used rather than how they are envisaged by their suppliers. For most of the last century the ‘Home’ was a place of rest as well as shelter, today the home is becoming a multi-functional space occupied by different individuals with their own individualistic agendas.

Short Term

Personal Space: People are seeking to spend more time in their own personal space. Fewer activities are performed as a family or group. Technologies such as televisions, hi-fi and PC’s are familiar in these personal spaces. More people decided to live physically alone in their personal space and join others as they choose for communal activities. Many modern relationships, some with children are employing separate physical homes as part of a larger family structure. ICT will make this trend even stronger.

Home Computing: The growth in PC ownership and their use on the Internet will continue to increase. Its unlikely that interactive TV with set-top boxes will replace the PC as the principle computing device in the home.

Digital Media: The next generation of digital media is now appearing in homes. There will be strong growth in digital terrestrial and satellite TV with interactive and the Internet included. Technologies such as ADSL will have a slower uptake because of price and technical limitations. Networking around the home of digital signals will be a major issue; lots of propriety systems are becoming available i.e. Blue Tooth.

Medium Term

Smart Home Appliances: Although already available in top of the range products, these will become increasingly common around the home as ordinary appliances such people replace fridges, washing machines etc. These appliances will be Internet capable, ready to communicate with the appliance supplier for maintenance checks or with utility provides such as the water or electricity companies for special price resource use.

Home Node: The average office today has its own local intranet connecting the many different ICT devices. The home is even more of a challenge with a wider variety of appliances and ICT devices that need to communicate with each other and the outside world. The home will become perceived as an information processing and communication node within the wider Internet. Home radio LAN kits will be available and easy to install.

Home E-helper: Management of home ICT devices will be a big problem. Expect new software systems from the giants like Microsoft which will manage your home ICT systems for you. A feature of these systems will be home software agents which busily keep everything working with a minimum of your intervention. These agents, sometimes known as butlers will be able to identify and speak to individual family members as well as executing complex verbal instructions fro the family.

Robotic Pets: The precursor to home robots, these small semi-intelligent toys will provide company and an acceptable user interface to many services. Robotic pets may perform medical supervision duties as well as security patrolling.

Longer term

3-D TV: The killer application for fibre optics into the home is 3-D TV, but this is not TV as we know it today. Whilst there will be standard broadcast programs most programming will be highly interactive with the viewer participating in shared highly realistic spaces with other people and artificial forms.

E-Spaces: The normal distinctions between different physical spaces around the home will nearly disappear. Spaces will be characterised by their ICT capability, the average bedroom will become a highly active environment that meets all sorts of communication and infotainment activities. Expect internal spaces, especially in old houses to be physically reconstructed.

Home automation: Today’s houses are physically inactive; the appearance of smart materials like glass that changes transparency on demand, walls that display large pictures, and noise scramblers that remove noise pollution will change this. There will be convergences with the Home Node and home-helper technologies.

Home robots: Integrated with the home central control system many functions, particularly cleaning around the home will done by these devices. The general believe is that there will many different devices rather than one general-purpose robot. In the much longer-term developments in artificial bionic materials mean a humanoid robot may be possible.

Home Environment Controller: Although basically a part of home automation it is worth a separate mention. Much more attention will be given to the quality of the air and the surrounding temperature. Global warming, increased external pollution and the appearance of new pathogens makes it likely that homes will have very sophisticated environmental control systems that involves air scrubbing and the inclusion of positive organisms in the air.

Home Power: Probably the most exciting development longer-term, certainly expect to see this earlier in large blocks of flats. Deriving power from different sources, including solar and waste fermentation will be important, but supplementing these will fuel cell technology. Each home will have its own cell to generate electrical power. Voltages around the home will be lower, but very low usage flat panels will have replaced light bulbs.

When At Work

For many people the distinction between work and personal activities is disappearing. The modern idea is that employment should be enjoyable and life fulfilling. At the moment perhaps only a small percentage enjoy this life style concept, for most it is still a journey to a place of employment and a return home in the evening. For those employed in the service sectors work increasingly means committing to long unsociable hours as society moves to a 24-hour economy. Working from home is both liberating and a curse, work networks are more difficult to maintain and the type of work that is suitable tends to be limited. No matter where you look the future of all work is impacted by new technology; everybody has to continually develop new skills that they hope will prepare them for future employment opportunities. Education for personal knowledge fulfilment has become education for employment; young people come to understand that education is just another form of work.

Short Term

Telework: Within next few years most professionals will work either from home or use their home as an extension of the office. Communications will bring the information for their work to them wherever they are, whether on the move or with customers and colleagues. Government administrative services will be decentralised into small local offices or provided from people at home.

Shared workspaces: These are buildings new or adopted in which people do different jobs but share common communication and ICT equipment. They are likely to proliferate in suburbs, town centres and rural areas.

Local Delivery: The increase in on-line shopping means that the delivery of goods to customers is a major problem. Customer on-line tracking of delivery helps to narrow time windows for delivery. Neighbourhood delivery centres are popular as people can pick up their goods at the own convenience.

Medium Term

Skill brokering: For many people employment means working for many different employers rather than just one. Agencies will employ these people and use on-line systems to match individual with work requirements. Periods of employment will vary, as will available salaries. Increasingly global corporations will use people selected for their skills from many different parts of the world.

Service Trading: The norm will be for most sole-traders to bid on-line for the work using digital photographs etc. The customer selects the lowest bid.

Guilds or e-Tribes: The use of on-line trading and bartering will encourage the growth of trade organisations to regulate and guarantee the services or goods offered. An important feature will be the ethical or social stance of each group.

Assembly Centres: The movement of completely manufactured goods is bulky and expensive. With modern communications and an increasingly literate population there will be the possibility of local people assembling everyday goods.

E-Pay: Online trading of skills for consumer products will become popular. There will also exist at least two levels of currency, global and local. Options will exist to convert into hard currencies like the Euro or into local currency to use at local shops.

Longer term

Consuming as work: In a wealthy and consumer orientated society many people in the future will be employed to consume so as to keep the economic system in balance.

Nano Factories: An evolution of assembly centres accept local raw materials are turned into finished products by pre-programmed nano machines and assembled by robotic workers.

At Leisure

Leisure is time spent on ones self or with family and friends. The pressures of modern life make leisure time a rare and valuable commodity. Much leisure time will be spent as today on DIY, whether around the house or in the garden. Similarly resources will be spent on relaxation and health activities. The commercial provision of activities to fill peoples leisure time is a highly competitive market; people expect a maximum experience within the time available. Management of time, personal fulfilment and development of personal dreams and a sense of ‘being’ are key drivers for the future.

Short Term

Hobby Nets: A modern form of the old hobby clubs, accept here people will enter a web portal to exchange ideas and get help on a leisure activity. For practical hobbies use will be made of digital cameras etc. to share problems.

Virtual friendships: Leisure time activity planning is carried out online with friends and family from the pub circle to organisation of holidays etc. This develops in the longer term into planning and co-ordination being undertaken for individuals by their personal agents.

Medium Term

Shopping: Going shopping will continue to be a major leisure activity for most people. However increasing use of on-line shopping and home or neighbourhood delivery means that shopping in local centres has becomes a lifestyle experience in itself.

Stimulated Experiences: Sophisticated application of technology to provide themed experiences. Initially provided at local centres, probably upgrades to current cinema complexes then provided into the home through personal interactive virtual spaces.

Longer term

Whole life Dream: Always connected means the management of your whole life experience, education, work, leisure and consumption merge into one personal time continuum. The real and unreal become one integrated reality that blends itself around oneself family and friends.

About the Physical World

Man for centuries has been shaping the physical environment, the desire to do this will continue but nature’s complex feedback mechanisms will challenge mans technological ingenuity. The population of the UK continues to concentrate in urban areas, particularly in the South East of England. The social / economic map of the UK shows wealth and employment concentrated around the major cities, with surrounding towns acting as principally dormitory areas. Demand for new housing and a better transport infrastructure continues, resulting in increasing pressure on the remaining rural areas. Car usage continues to grow and with it increased congestion and pollution. Rising sea levels and freak weather conditions threaten major centres of the UK, in particular London and the South East. The solution to the problems and management of the physical environment by government and their agencies becomes increasingly difficult as it involves politically controversial policies that are perceived by individuals to threaten their freedoms and rights.

Short Term

Surveillance & tracking: The use of electronic surveillance will increase, on the streets, in communal areas, on the roads and on the Internet. A double-edged technology that promises greater individual security but threatens individual privacy.

Vehicle Electronics: Further use of on-board electronics to improve vehicle performance, reduce pollution and provide features such as navigation and entertainment. The car becomes an extension of the home and office with Internet connections.

Virtual Identity: The identity of physical places as places in virtual space. This is used to enhance and market local identities as well as inform local people.

Medium Term

Local Services: Local authorities or their infrastructure suppliers provide extensive local networks for the collection, management and delivery of local information. Local authorities and government services provided on-line to the home or local centres.

Urban Management: The widespread implementation of urban management systems to control and regulate the quality of local environments and activities taking place. This includes management of vehicle movement, both private and public transport and links to pollution and local weather sensors situated in the environment.

Smart public transport: Convergence between taxi services and bus services to provide on-demand transport requested from public terminals or mobile phones. New generation of small to medium sized low pollution people movers.

Window on the World: The detailed virtual representation of physical space provides everybody with the opportunity to see on their PC, TV or mobile what is happening in the real world; where the bus is, where the traffic jam is, how cold it is or where a friend is waiting for them.

Longer term

Adaptive Recognition: The world is full of smart devices that are aware of what is going on around them. The devices are networked together and provide in virtual space a representation of what is happening in the physical world. Movement in the physical world is mapped onto time line trajectories in cyberspace. These trajectories are able to uniquely identify who somebody is. There is no longer the need to have unique personal identifiers such as implants or carry a mobile phone.

Here Taxes: The notion of taxing where people are in virtual space has been transferred into the physical world. As people move around in the physical world consuming resources their positions are monitored and taxes charged based upon the properties of the physical space they occupy. As physical space is a finite resource this method of taxation encourages environmental awareness and greater use of cyberspace.

Nano Dust: Cleaning the environment is a key requisite of future environmental husbandry. Small nano machines mad from inorganic materials continually float through the air removing both physical and biological pollutants. The dust is harmless to plants, animals and humans.

In Society

The structures and institutions of society will become increasingly complex reflecting the highly individualistic needs and behaviour of people. Like any complex system overall behaviour will be difficult to predict with any certainty. Information technology and models of societal behaviour will help politicians anticipate and manage this complexity. Today’s public apathy will disappear as people find empowerment through the new technologies to actively participate.

Short Term

Electronic voting: Further trials and eventually full implementation of on-line voting will be implemented.

Government on-line: Most government services, taxation etc will be available through e-commerce services, shifting much of the administration of government onto business and individuals.

Medium Term

E-Polls: Although not formal elections or referendums, e-Polls will be regularly carried out to monitor public responses to issues. Eventually e-Polls will be replaced by data mining of people’s behaviour as a more accurate way of judging their opinions.

E-Justice: To encourage greater public awareness of unacceptable social behaviour the administration of justice will go on-line. Not to be confused with TV trials of the last century, e-Justice involves compulsory on-line jury service participation from a greater proportion of the public. Where appropriate people can visit trial spaces to observe.

Long Term

E-Parliament: The significance of physical space parliaments will diminish as much of government activities are undertaken virtually. The structures of representational democracy disappearing as lobby and interest groups use the easily available communication capabilities of virtual space participations to argue for their ideas and views. Government will still exist, but its purpose is to administrate and manage not rule.