Back to the future with face-to-face business
(excerpt) Anjana Ahuja
The Times, 12 April 2000, p12-13

Peter Cochrane, the head of technology at BT, holds no truck with the idea that we might be getting fed up with technology and wonders why we do not embrace its benefits more ardently. He points out that, despite the irritations, people will stand by technology that brings convenience to their lives. He cites the enormous popularity of mobile phones - the number of mobiles in Britain was predicted to exceed the number of home telephones in 2004; the important milestone will, instead, be reached this year. "Why would I want to spend 14 on a 20-track CD when I want to listen to only three of them?" he asks me pointedly. That is why he chooses to download snippets of music and movies from the Internet. He stores his chosen pieces - Star Wars and Last of the Mohicans among them - on his laptop, with family photographs and lecture notes.

Computing power will invade every aspect of life simply because it is so cheap. He can see a time when pizza packaging will have a chip in it; the chip will automatically tell the microwave how long to cook it for, and on what setting. Other household devices will be monitored over the Internet and engineers thencalled automatically when they break down (one manufacturer has produced a washing machine that can be monitored in this way).

Cochrane envisages mobile telephones becoming much more intelligent devices which, intriguingly, will be able to communicate clandestinely with other devices. Casting his restless eye around the labyrinthine Barbican, where we have arranged to meet, Cochrane asks: "Wouldn't it be good if you could say to your mobile 'Where is the nearest Italian restaurant?' and then your device just books it?" The device would be able to glean information about its surroundings, no matter what its location, through constant reference to global positioning satellites.

The social situation in which Cochrane and I find ourselves - nibbling canap‡s and sipping fruit juice after a lecture - would be an entirely different affair in the future. This will be largely thanks to the credit-card sized mobile device - which will combine a phone, a PC, an Internet point, a pager - we will all carry around. "I'd wave it in front of this canap‡," Cochrane says, "and I would get a calorie readout in front of my eyes. I'd be able to pick up this glass of orange juice and tell whether it contains poison."

We could even set up our devices to tell us when someone with similar interests and hobbies was in close proximity. That would avoid "a lot of social pussyfooting", he says. On the other hand, the two strangers need not even know - the devices, or "agents", would be "talking" to each other. Cochrane says: "Our agents might discover that we read 70 per cent of the same books. My agent might offer your agent details on the oter 30 per cent, on the basis that you might like them."

I counter that the idea of being connected to such an autonomous, electronic "thing" seems a little creepy. Cochrane tersely points out that I can switch it off. "People worry about computers playing better chess than we do, but why? They create a further route to solving problems. Besides, machines can't solve the problems we can. They can't put petrol in a car, or fix a broken wheel. We should be using both machines and man where each is most appropriate." On a more prosaic note, he says a device with access to personal information could save lives: "If I travelled a lot, I would like to know that if I passed out, people could get hold of my bank account details, to pay for medical treatment, and my medical records, so that if I was diabetic the hospital would know about it."

He sees this electronic information goldmine being implanted in each of us in the form of a chip, and as befits a technological visionary Cochrane would give up his passport and credit cards for one tomorrow. Yet he is not gung-ho about the social implications of these remarkable visions: "I always say that, as we wire the universe, we should not short-circuit the soul."