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The future of communications

Feb 1999

Adapted from The Atlas of the Future

First, the telephone changed the lives of millions, then came the turn of computers. Now, communications and computing are fast converging. The internet, for example, is a communications network that already links almost 60 million computers and over 150 million people. Communications and computer processing technologies are being incorporated into a wide range of consumer electronics to provide the final phase of an information technology revolution - mass access to digital multimedia.

Rapidly falling costs of communications, coupled with the multiplication of services available, will have a huge impact on every aspect of our lives over the coming years. Half of the world's people have yet to make their first phone call, but with the promise of vast returns, telecommunications companies are investing in systems that will reach the world over. Even before cables cover the more remote areas, new fleets of satellites will offer cheaper telecommunications in almost every corner. This will be especially valuable where the waiting time for conventional phones is very long. Roving business people from the rich world will want to stay in touch wherever they go and many parts of the developing world will benefit as a result.

Many terrestrial mobile networks will also allow people to be in touch with each other at lower cost. Many more of us will choose to avoid the trouble of installing a fixed line. A new international mobile technology, UMTS (Universal Mobile Telephony Service) will soon give much faster rates of data transmission, so that waiting times for email and internet access on the move will be much shorter. Indeed, on all networks, voice calls will soon account for only a tiny proportion of all communications. Already most conversations on the planet are between machines.

Optical fibre used for direct phone lines on land still provides the greatest capacity and speed. This will continue to be so. In the early 1990s, the most that could be squeezed down an optical cable was 2.5 billion bits per second. Yet by 2003, a world-wide network 400 times faster should be operational. Even this is only a tiny fraction of fibre's theoretical limits.

We cannot expect superhighway speed in homes or offices for many years, but change will still be rapid. As communications and computing converge, new services will become available. By 2001, a box that sits on top of our television sets will provide interactive digital television and electronic shopping, greatly increase the amount of information available on the internet, and allow us to wander through virtual reality environments with our friends. Such services would be delivered by satellite, cable networks, or over plain old telephone lines. A personal computer will no longer be needed to access these services, network capacity into homes will increase, and the long wait for an internet page should soon be a thing of the past. We are already seeing signs of new psychosocial problems of the future - internet addiction and escapism into cyberspace.

The internet is growing fast, but only a third of all personal computers are now connected to it. Early explosive growth is showing some signs of slowing down. But cheaper technology and faster networks may trigger another phase in which internet growth accelerates again. The more people are wired up, the more services will expand, perhaps pushing the internet close to saturation in just a few years. As a result, sensible predictions of internet growth are impossible for more than a few months ahead.

As technology becomes cheaper and more powerful, access to information technology will be influenced more by choice and lifestyle. In the rich world, as with television, we will change from being "haves" or "have nots", and become "wants" or "don't wants." The process will inevitably be slower in the developing world, but the path will be similar. This is the beginning of an era in which our geographic location will be much less significant and in which the social, political and economic connections between people will become more and more global.

The wired world is facilitating other changes in our lives. Satellites can see objects on the ground only a few feet across; video cameras watch over many town and shopping centres; and traffic cameras attached to computers can recognise car number plates while capturing photographic evidence of the occupants. Surveillance can be beneficial when it reduces crime or the fear of crime in our neighbourhoods. But governments can also use it to impose greater social and political controls and given these extra powers, most countries do not have adequate privacy laws for the protection of their citizens.

In the future, cars will almost certainly use fuel cells and electric motors. Given the vast increase expected in the number of vehicles on the roads, this will be essential for environmental reasons. In fact, information technology will by no means replace physical travel. Teletravel will whet our appetite for real travel. Teleworking will make travel for leisure and pleasure more inviting.

It will soon become possible to speak to your computer, telling it you want to go to the theatre. Having shown you a preview and confirmed your interest, it will buy and print your tickets. At the appropriate time, it will book your car parking space, negotiate with traffic computers, book a route without traffic jams, and having assessed the likely length of your journey, tell you when you need to leave. In your car, a navigation computer will guide you to the car park while you sit back and relax, enjoying a wider range of in-car entertainment, in almost guaranteed safety. This futuristic fantasy is probably only thirty years away.