The shape of things to come

By PETER GRIFFIN

There have been many futurists over the years - Arthur C. Clarke and Alvin Toffler among them. Time has proved some more accurate than others.

That's the problem with talking about the future, anything can happen. No one knows that better than, Jeff Wacker, a computer science graduate with 30 years' experience applying new technologies to big business.

A fellow at IT giant EDS and vice-president and chief technical officer for its global industry groups, Wacker shares his surname with another futurist who visited New Zealand recently - Watts Wacker.

Their paths sometimes cross but they are not related, and don't necessarily think alike.

Based in Plano, Texas, Jeff Wacker searches the world for fledgling technologies with big potential.

The next phase of our technological evolution, he says, is simplification. Before, consumers were willing to pay for greater complexity - more buttons on the VCR. The result has left us with more technology and information than we can handle.

"We're at the height of chaos at the moment," reasons Wacker. "Getting close to technology overflow."

Increasingly, the complexity will be held within the gadgets we buy, which will serve to simplify rather than complicate our lives.

Even Wacker is reluctant to take any serious shots at what we can expect beyond five years.

But he points to the obvious hotspots - nanotechnology, wireless connectivity and "expert systems" or the precursor to true artificial intelligence.

Not only will microscopic robots scurry around our bodies tending our ailments, they will replicate matter at a molecular level, a concept more like Star Trek than real life.

"The dotcom debacle swept away a lot of good technologies. People's good ideas have been lying fallow."

Now those ideas are being resurrected. Wacker is seeing venture capitalists on the hunt for technology investments again. The result will be a wave of innovation picking up from where we were before the meltdown.

"In the next five years we'llsee much more new technologythan in the past five years."

As Wacker travels, he carries in his case a collection of state-of-the-art gadgets that hint at the future.

There's the Health Glove, a fingerless glove loaded with electronic sensors that measure galvanic skin response (how much we sweat), body temperature and pulse rate. An inbuilt pump inflates the glove to measure blood pressure.

The glove connects to your computer, downloading your vital statistics for the day and evaluating them. Perfect for Gordon Gekko-style executives in high-stress jobs.

"It gives me a complete diagnosis and tells me if I should be calling my doctor."

If the wearer stresses out too much during the day a light on the glove starts flashing red - the signal to calm down or risk a heart attack.

Then there's the "I-button", the digital fraternity ring loaded with 128KB of memory - enough to store a digital picture of yourself, all your passwords and Pin numbers and even monetary credits.

The wallet is on the way out says Wacker. Digital money is the currency of the future and rings like the I-button, which was designed by Sun Microsystems, will be used in conjunction with biometric identifiers like iris and fingerprint scanners to replace passports and ID cards.

Our interaction with PCs will change with tools such as the Light Glove, which was invented by a friend of Wacker and attaches to the wrist to simulate use of a mouse - just tap in the air to navigate around a web page.

Some of the technologies will be extensions of what we already have. In the case of Teleportec, it is an advanced form of video-conferencing - 3D projection technology that allows Princess Leia-like holographic appearances in meetings.

Imagine summoning a 3D rendering of your personal banker, who may be thousands of kilometres away. Such technology has the ability to introduce radically more efficient business models and make life easier.

But there's a darker side - a threat illustrated well by Bill Joy, Sun Microsystems' chief scientist, who penned a now-famous article in Wired magazine in 2000 on therise of the machines.

"People won't be able to just turn the machines off, because they will be so dependent on them that turning them off would amount to suicide," Joy predicted.

Wacker calls it the "fear factor", the worry that the microscopic robots will "replicate out of control and turn the world into a great mass of grey goo".

It's the stuff of a hundred sci-fi movies, but there are more subtle pitfalls to our greater use of technology.

"We've less ability to do critical thinking. Where are all the deep thinkers?" asks Wacker. "They're tied up talking on the telephone."

In a world where communication has been reduced to a two-line email, the prospects for involved analysis and debate look grim.

If anything, the coming years will at least supply enough fascinating gadgets to keep us weighing up the pros and cons of technology.

As Wacker says, the only time that is more interesting to live in than now will be next year.

Teleportec

Bill Joy's Wired magazine article

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