Copyright Ian Pearson, BT Futurologist

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NBIC by 2030

Ian Pearson, BT Futurologist, October 2004

This article is about 2030 and some of the technological advances that we might reasonably expect by then. All the advances in IT we have seen to date, and all the biotech advances of genetic modification and cloning will seem rather insignificant once we start seeing the results of NBIC convergence, that is, nanotech, biotech, infotech and cognition. Exciting times lie ahead, and as the Royal Society has recently warned in their report on nanotechnology, we will need to take care proceeding down the path.

Taking these four fields separately, nanotech will give us a cross-industry capability to routinely manipulate matter down to resolutions of below 100 nanometres (100 nanometres is a 10,000^th of a millimetre). In IT, this will enable better electronics, batteries, displays, fuel cells, and sensors, with many other advances in other fields. Biotechnology advances will yield routine manipulation of biological matter, better medicine, cures for some major diseases, increased longevity, and the ability to synthesise a variety of materials by using biological processes. Information technology will bring faster computers, better storage and communications, artificial intelligence, and simple interfaces, ubiquitously and pervasively, with every area of our lives being enhanced or enabled in many ways by new software and hardware, all at low cost. Finally, cognitive science, and later cognitive technology, will bring us understanding of how our nervous systems work, how consciousness works, and eventually the means to manipulate and enhance minds, even to create synthetic ones.

Convergence will accelerate and magnify these trends and add even more - just think how much happened when computing converged with communications. Converging IT and biotech will allow us to link electronics to the body. Adding in cognitive technology and nanotech will allow us to record and replay sensations, and eventually to make add-ons for the human brain to augment our memory or intelligence. It will also allow us to fabricate machine consciousness, probably well within our 2030 time frame, and probably with intelligence levels far superior to human intelligence. If this sounds a claim too far, we are already working today on concept designs for how this might be achieved, as are many other researchers around the world. In any case, most of the innovation and design will be done by other intelligent machines, so humans won't need to be able to understand how to do it themselves.

We won't have to wait for superhuman machines to see interesting new technology though. Direct retinal projection using active contact lenses will be around within a decade in the lab, 15 years on the street. You need never see an ugly person again, since you can use a digital overlay to make them look beautiful. Imagine linking these to basic pattern recognition technology using brainwaves. When you've gone to bed, it should be possible to detect when you are entering a dream state, then to inject images and sounds to drive your dreams in a pre-selected path. Computer assisted dreaming should be a lot of fun, with the versatility of computer games and the realism of a dream. As thought recognition improves, the dreamer might be able to dream fully interactively and it is possible in principle to link your dreams to those of other people in this way too. We may even know how to induce dream states by 2030 so that interactive shared dreaming could be a popular leisure pursuit.

The ability to record and replay sensations would also enable highly enhanced virtual environments even when the subjects are wide awake. Imagine recording a handshake so that you can shake hands on a deal across the ocean, or recording a kiss or cuddle -eventually orgasm by email.

Much closer still, technology will improve our social lives by introducing us to other people with whom we are likely to get on well. Wearable devices such as personality badges could radiate our personal web sites into a digital bubble around us, with vast amounts of information about us - our interests, desires, our business and social data. People walking past would similarly radiate such information. Our wearable devices could alert us when we meet someone compatible. Some devices already exist that do part of this, such as mobile phones, but they don't give the wireless web bubble functionality that the personality badge will provide. These will offer the ability to wonder about the person sitting opposite on the train and to check out their web site to find out all about them. A range of new types of messaging service will accompany these kinds of devices, allowing us to message people nearby by direction, personality, business or interest group.

Nanotechnology is already making contributions to cosmetics, and we may expect smart cosmetics in due course, containing particles that can be aligned to an electric field. By printing an 'active skin' pattern onto the skin, make-up could be controlled electronically. A lady might use a digital bathroom mirror to select what she wants to look like, smear the make-up all over her face, press a button and watch as it instantly becomes like the picture on the mirror. She can then go through the day, knowing that the make-up will change appearance according to where she is, whom she is with, and the context of the meeting. Components in smart perfumes could be selectively vaporised too.

Smart machines will be the biggest impact of NBIC convergence though, and they will be linked to the human brain, though 2030 will only see the early stages of this man-machine convergence. It would be very dangerous indeed to produce independent machines with superhuman capability if humans cannot directly access similar levels of intelligence by brain augmentation. Without such precautions, human survival would be at the whim of the machine. As computing technology progresses from today, we will see the use of ultra-simple architectures that make much better use of basic physics, analog and non-linear effects to achieve what clumsy and bulky software does today. Operating systems will be condensed and become largely hardware or ROM based, mainly for security reasons. We will see a massive resurgence of analog computing, and most of the inter-device communication will be optical. If at least some of these use neurons for processing and memory, then such architectures will be perfectly capable of producing emotional computers. We may even have some quantum computing. We will see 3D architectures become standard, and many circuits will be produced by self-assembly and self-organisation, even using DNA or custom designed proteins as the jig and assembler in some cases. The 2020 time frame might well see computers as jars of gel containing suspension of processing particles with free-space optical interconnects to millions of other particles. Coupled with greatly improved evolutionary design techniques, self organisation will allow intelligence to be produced by the litre.

As the convergence really matures, assisted and accelerated greatly by smart machines, we will develop the capability to design DNA and other protein based devices to assemble any required electronic structure. We may imagine a smart bacterium that assembles an electronic neuron within its own cell, and then powers it for its lifetime. The computer by 2030 might well be a peach yoghurt that insists on a discussion on ethics before it consent to being eaten for breakfast.

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