Meet Ian – BT’s technology time lord

May 1 2008 by Andrew Mernin, The Journal

BT’s very own futurologist looks into his crystal ball and tells Andrew Mernin what the future holds for the world of technology.

IT’S the summer of 2030. The England football team has just lost to a team of intelligent robots, scientists are celebrating the birth of the first woolly mammoth since the end of the Ice Age while China has just launched a cyber war against Taiwan.

You’re off on holiday but can’t decide whether to take a virtual tour of the Pyramids or spend a little extra and take the space elevator to one of Earth’s many orbiting hotels. Welcome to the mind-boggling world of Ian Neild – also known as the future.

As a futurologist for BT, the Middlesbrough-born soothsayer is charged with keeping the telecommunications giant ahead of its rivals by predicting the impact and use of technology in years to come.

He also travels the world presenting on technology trends and their impact on society and business, and co-writes the BT technology timeline which lists possible developments in the next 50 years.

But the physics graduate is not a fantasist – his predictions are based on clinical studies with key figures at the helm of BT’s research and development department.

Meanwhile, the BT timeline – which predicts the first manned mission to Mars in the 2020s – is used extensively by businesses across the world to help them think about their future strategies.

Within minutes of meeting Mr Neild, you feel like the scientist from HG Wells’ The Time Machine being thrust years into the future.

The physics graduate buzzes with enthusiasm at the prospect of the new devices which are set to change our lives.

As a family man, advancements in video games, holidays and education all score highly on his excitement meter.

“There could come a time when you can load the Great North Run into a games console and compete in it virtually in real time,” he says.

“We could see the start of virtual tourism. If I wanted to see the Pyramids, instead of travelling for hours to get there, I could go there virtually.

“History lessons could also become more interesting – you could visit Stonehenge to see it as it was when it was built instead of the pile of rubble it is today.”

Mr Neild, who began his BT career in 1993 researching high-speed optical wireless systems, bases his vision of the future on the pattern of the past – a method he calls “the history of the future”. He also marvels at the rate at which technology has changed in recent decades.

“In the 1970s, a megabyte of memory was worth millions of pounds but today it isn’t even big enough to hold a music file – i-Pods would have been worth millions in the 70s.”

One of the most exciting areas of technological advancement for Mr Neild is in printing and copying. The technology to ‘print out’ electrical circuits already exists and Mr Neild predicts that this could eventually lead to “3D printers” with the ability to reproduce 3D objects.

“Eventually, you could take a photograph of something, scan it and print it out in your 3D maker.”

The BT timeline, which Mr Neild writes alongside his colleague Ian Pearson, works out the earliest time which a particular event could happen. “For example you couldn’t have a nuclear war until two countries had nuclear weapons,” he explains.

“If you are thinking of talking to ET, the earliest you would get response would be 2050 based on when the first radio transmission was made, how far it would have to travel and how long it would take to come back.” Among the items on the list which goes right up to 2075, is the prediction that by 2011 we could see the creation of an artificially intelligent being with the brain power to pass school exams.

Fortunately, robots won’t become physically and mentally superior to humans until the 2030s. The list also flaunts the possible creation of a second internet with guaranteed security and no spam.

In the near future, Mr Neild expects to see the launch of projectors on mobile devices to overcome the limiting factor of small screens.

He also expects communications companies to increasingly focus on finding new internet users in developing countries.

“The next billion new internet users will come from the developing world,” he says.

Click here to see the full BT timeline.