Our ability to generate information and transport it about the planet on super highways of transparent optical fibre is about to change the way in which we communicate, work and live. There is not a single aspect of our future lives which will not be touched by the communication and computing revolution that is now upon us. The change we are about to witness will completely overshadow the impact of the Industrial Revolution, physical transport and even the invention of the wheel. Unlike all other human activities, our ability to generate and transport information is doubling every year, but with an attendant fall in cost and use of raw materials. In 1956 the cost of a transatlantic call was ?2.80 per minute, computers in the home were unthinkable and the storage and transport of information was almost wholly conducted by paper. Today, we have a vast network of optical fibre with 85% of all the telephone calls in the UK and 60% of all the telephone calls world-wide transported on this new and exciting medium. At the same time, computer technology is providing a processing, storage and display ability for the office and home that completely surpasses the mainframe computers of only 15 years ago.

Our world has only finite resources that we are eating into at an alarming rate. If we are to survive as a species, we have to reduce and control the amount of physical travel, the burning off of hydro carbons for the generation of energy and increase our use of information as a real commodity. As we move into the 21st Century we will see a new range of facilities at home and in the office that will include access to vast data banks of information world-wide through super highways using a variety of media from optical fibre through to radio. The actual cost of moving information will be insignificant (and in many respects, it already is) as will be the storage and presentation. We will be able to call for the very latest publications and information on any topic. We will be able to drill down to a level of detail appropriate for our needs with interfaces that have been designed for the human being rather than technology. One of the key difficulties we experience today with information technology is that the interfaces actually freeze out some 80% of the population by virtue of their unfriendliness. The humanisation of information, giving it characteristics that we can recognise and presenting it in a form that anyone from 3 years old to 90 years old can easily interface with is a major objective. The form of these interfaces are already with us and are based on pen and voice input and screen and voice output from machines. In their most advanced state they involve use of Virtual Reality and Telepresence where our senses are extended over short and vast distances so that we can be embedded in data and information worlds and view information in a new way. The use of multimedia and Virtual Reality in games is now well established and becoming available at a rapidly reducing price. The combination of real and virtual worlds perhaps presents the most tantalising prospect. Imagine the Olympic Games of the 21 st Century. A simple camera unit sat in a seat at the stadium could relay back all the audio visual information to a VR terminal in our home. Sitting in our arm chair would feel like sitting in the stadium, we would be able to look ahead and see the event to the left and right and see the people in the chairs either side of us, to the back of and the sky above. As we moved our head we would be effectively the camera man in charge of the view. We could go on to select one of a number of seats in which we would like to sit. Interestingly, millions of people would be able to sit in the same seat, all sharing the same view. Alternatively, if we are not feeling too well, we may call up the doctor who can then visit us in this virtual space and conduct an examination through an abstraction of our vital information abstracted through bio sensors attached to the body. The real time monitoring of human beings at a distance is already being tested in research hospitals in the United States to optimise the administration of drugs and within the decade is likely to be available for general health care. In the entertainment field we will be able to enter into the film as the hero/heroine/villain or whoever we choose. Stories will unfold and our participation will guide the final outcome. In effect we will become the story teller and participant. No longer will we sit on the outside of an event looking in, but we will be able to participate and have experiences that no one had ever had before. In this virtual world experiments have already been conducted with virtual surf boards, synthetic bodies, and participation in sporting events at a distance. As this technology becomes available, only than will we realise its full potential.

On a more fundamental plain, we will also be able to able to attend school, college and university at a distance through the surrogation of our senses and transport to a different location. Trials are already being conducted with surgeons able to operate on humans and effectively have thousands of spectators sat behind their eyes, through the use of miniature cameras and microphones. The education and training in the professions at an undergraduate and postgraduate level is also about to be radically changed. It will no longer be necessary to attend a course at a university. It will be possible to attend many universities, mixing and matching modules, lectures and direct experience to suit the needs of the individual. Interestingly, all of this can be done from the home or the office of place of work. It will not be necessary to travel to California to see the very latest transplant technology, you will be able to witness it at first hand from your armchair or from your desk.

Ultimately, information itself presents us with a major challenge. In Europe alone there are 6 million photographs of church windows, the Library of Congress in Washington requires 35 kilometres of book shelf each year to accommodate new volumes. The amount of information generated by the human race is doubling every 3 or 4 years. How are we going to find those interesting articles, papers and snippets of information that are of interest to us. On an everyday plain, we already have great difficulty in the United States selecting a TV programme to watch when confronted with 100 cable TV channels. This selection is about to be increased to 500. But with video on demand technology, this selection could be vast. It is likely to exceed 10,000 videos to choose from any time of day and night at the push of a button. To cope with all of this will require some augmentation of the human brain - this has to be based on artificial intelligence. The use of software agents that will move into information fields and bring to the fore the most likely things of interest to us will be of vital ingredient to this technology revolution. However, they will need the intelligent ability to learn of our interests and to tempt us into new fields as they develop.

Forecasting the future is extremely difficult and risky. So far all the efforts at technology forecasting have been pessimistic in that we have generally underestimated the changes the technology will bring. If this was true of the telephone which was never conceived to ve anything other than an instrument for entertainment, then information technology and information worlds will be even more radically wrong.