In about 20 years, conventional telecommunications will cease to exist and ambient intelligence will take its place.
This is the prediction of British Telecoms (BT) futurist Ian Pearson, addressing the Futurex 2005 conference in Sandton via a live satellite link last week.
Pearson said the next global IT buzzword would be NBIC (nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology and cognitive science) convergence, which essentially means ICT will be seamlessly integrated into everything around us.
Backing his prediction was the fact that the European Union was already spending three billion euros on nanotechnology and one billion euros on NBIC specifically. "And the Americans are going to spend a lot more than that, and the Far Eastern countries will spend around the same again. So this is not science fiction but 'science faction`," Pearson said.
Amid this new ambient intelligence environment, communications could become virtually free, Pearson said.
He described how devices would soon create their own networks from one smart device to another, linking to each other across long distances.
This would eliminate the need for traditional telecoms services and would be a serious threat to telecoms companies unless they added services to this technology and made their money that way.
Pearson said BT plans to launch a phone smart enough to seamlessly switch to available networks without the user having to do anything.
"Once we start doing this, we can use 'symbiotic networks` (ad hoc networks) that set up wireless networks between devices, so one device links to the next available one, and so on and so on until the network extends across town, giving people free calls," he said.
"Ten years from now, telecoms companies won`t need to exist, because the devices themselves can set up networks and you can link the calls that way.
"We`re already moving into a broadband network economy with high-speed links within companies and to the Internet."
Outlining the future, Pearson said the next age would be the world of ambient intelligence, after which we would enter an age of simplicity.
Eventually, before 2025, people would be able to feel as if they are in someone`s office, feel their handshake or feel their hug, from a distance, and telecoms will have gone as far as it can, he said.
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