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Anyone can call themselves a futurologist. It’s essentially shorthand for ‘professional speculator’. However, some have more claim on the title than others, and one person who can justifiably claim to have made a career out of speculating about the future – other than Mystic Meg – is Ian Pearson. Until the end of last year, BT employed him as a professional futurologist, making it his job to outline a vision of the future for technology to BT, its corporate consulting clients, and the press. Now working independently, his job remains the same, and he has lost none of the confidence that has led him to declare that “anyone can predict stuff, but only a few get it right.” So, what will life be like in five, ten, twenty years’ time? Well, we can stop worrying about flying off on foreign holidays and using gas-guzzling 4x4s, if Pearson is to be believed. “A lot of the panic about the environment is misplaced,” he says. “Within that timeframe, technology will make the significant problems go away.” For example, carbon dioxide – blamed for much of today’s climate change – will be got rid of within just a few years. “It’s not necessary.” “Think about all the panic over the ozone layer a few years ago. With a couple of minor developments, the problem had gone.” “We’ll eliminate congestion, which accounts for a third of CO2, by the end of the timeframe. Solar power will become much bigger. We’ll be able to harness superconductivity to build solar farms in the Sahara. Africa will be able to make money, and the energy will be able to be transmitted to Europe. What about the intelligent, subservient robots that we have always been promised since the time of HG Wells? “I will be very surprised if we don’t have intelligent machines by 2020,” he says. “I started making that prediction in 1991, and I haven’t changed my mind.” Meanwhile, nurses and other caring professions can apparently rest assured their jobs are safe, because what Pearson calls “the care economy” will expand to take up around 20% of the job market. Police officers and teachers are also safe. But there will be “less pen pushing” as computers encroach into more and more low-end jobs. “We will be left with the jobs that are focused on people,” he predicts. “This will be good for women, as there will be an increase in the jobs that are more suited to women. Us blokes will be reduced to second fiddle.” But in the sixties people were predicting we’d be using flying cars and wearing silver suits by now, I say. How can he be so sure that his predictions will hold true? Pearson gives a lengthy answer that appears to boils down to the leaps forward in the past few years being a good indicator of the future. “We’re on an exponential curve, where the faster it gets, the better it gets – it’s a positive feedback loop,” he says, adding: “It’s not just me.” That doesn’t sound like a cast-iron guarantee to me, but Pearson is presumably sensible enough to realise that the only people who can predict the future with total confidence exist in Harry Potter novels. And in any case, it hardly matters for Pearson. As he has said in the past himself, “I hope to be retired before anyone can prove me wrong.” Graham Taylor Jul 21, 2008 Email this article Printer friendly page Previous Page
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