Just 30 years ago a computer costing ?250,000 was the size of a domestic washing machine and less powerful than a digital wrist watch today. Such is the progress in electronics and that we have rapidly moved from a world of no computers in the 1940's, to a world where they are everywhere in the 1990's. My car now has more computing power than the first lunar lander! Every year our ability to electronically process and store information doubles and looks set to do so for several decades. So the computer on your desk will probably be 1000 times more powerful in ten years, 1 million times more powerful in 20 years and 1000 million times more powerful in 30 years. At this rate of progress we may see a super computer as powerful as a human, in terms of it's raw processing and storage capability, around 2015. Similarly, in 1956 a telephone call between the UK and USA was a rarity. There were only 12 radio telephone circuits across the Atlantic and individual calls cost ?2.80 per minute. Today that call is only 40p on one of 250,000 speech channels provided by optical fibre cables crossing the ocean floor. The economic nature of these advances can be gauged by comparing the price of a car, a telephone call and a computer in 1956 and today. Information Technology is the only sector providing such progress, much more for far less for decades to come!

Many people worry about the future and what to do with all this communication and computing power and our increasing depenence on it. It is like trying to foresee the future at the time the printing press was invented and the demise of the quill pen became obvious. What was not so obvious was that the printing press would demand a higher quantity and quality of paper and this in turn would lead to the development of the pencil, the fountain pen, the ball point and ultimately the felt tip. The reality is that more people are writing on paper than ever before and the quill pen was an inadequate instrument for writing anyway. Today we can all have a pen and we can all have good quality paper. So it is important to think of technological revolutions in terms of in terms of "as well as" not "instead of" capabilities, adding to our capabilities, not detracting.

Today we pick up a telephone and key in 14 digits and someone somewhere on the planet can immediately talk to us. Numerous speech services are available for banking and messaging. Before the end of the millennium we will also be able to call up business information, medical services and many other voice applications with no human intervention. It is already possible to have a limited dialogue with computers within a constrained area. By the year 2000 a doctor will be able to call up full patient records on demand from a fixed or mobile telephone anywhere.

The world of the Internet is accessible to anyone with the right equipment and a modest amount of determination. Schools, business's and individuals now operate over invisible networks, gaining access to a myriad of information services that present a cornucopia of richness beyond our imagination. On a typical Saturday my son will visit NASA and look at the latest space telescope pictures and then go on to Edwards Airforce Base to examine specific aircraft, or roam a number of global libraries. On a typical business day I will be in a company far from my own, a hotel room or an airport and will be managing my department of 660 people from my lap top. I have access to my databases and all of my people instantaneously, and I am just one of a growing population using the telephone network in a new and dynamic way.

The future then is not about telephone calls - it's about information in the right form at the right time and at the right price. Where will it take us? Already there have been numerous trials of video and information on demand services for the office and the home. We can now buy a personal computer combined with a television, and soon the telephone, modem, fax and other facilities will be built in to give us a work station, entertainment centre and games console in the same box. With this technology convergence it will be possible for everyone to access the information world. The key however, is the human interface, and it has to be said that the designers of VHS recorders, hi-fi systems, televisions and computers have a perverse mentality. What they produce is counter intuitive and not user friendly. Getting the interface right for Joe Public, so at any age between 3 and 90 they are able to drive such devices without recourse to a handbook is a vital ingredient to success.

It would be easy to suppose that by the year 2000 we will select from 500 TV channels, and cruise the Information Superhighway all day - the reality is likely to be very different. We are already data rich and information poor and face a major challenge in finding a TV programme worth watching from the limited selection available today! We also have paper libraries of millions of books that are being translated onto CD's and will be available on line. Perhaps for the first time we face a sea of information and an almost infinite inability to find what we want. Contrast this to the Pope's library in 1600 which had around 400 books. The librarian was the index, the retrieval mechanism and the filing system, but perhaps most important of all, he was the regulator of a zero serendipity world. The Pope decided who could see what, and the regulator would carry out that policy. This echo of a past age is still with us as governments still aspire to be information regulators!

A Dickensian library full of books has the magic quality of "serendipity". Whilst looking for something specific you may find things you had been looking for in the past or that you might require in the future. This facility was never engineered - it just happened by chance. How different is Internet, the bizarre bazaar! A world of infinite information with no particular order or mechanism for finding what we are looking for - the ultimate 100% serendipitous world. Conversely the CD ROM presents a highly ordered structure to the extent that five clicks of a mouse finds us buried in a data mine, unable to see anything either side and having to resort to 'Control Quit ' and start again. Another zero serendipity world! What is required is the information supermarket where it is possible to have a degree of order and serendipity that allows us to navigate. Beyond this, when we are searching for specific information, we require software agents, 'gobots' that automatically do our searching across the planet. The concept of a library or information store now being in one place is moribund as increasingly, the information we seek is distributed across the globe.

Observing children has revealed some interesting features of IT that break the traditional pupil - teacher relationship. Some educationalists see a future with pupils and machines in rows with the teacher up front pronouncing "press the return key". Wrong! Teaching children IT skills requires no more than a pupil and a loaded package , and the teacher walking away. Come back in a day or two and the pupil is an expert! What then the role of the teacher? Well, it looks like there will be a transition from a 'sage on the stage' to 'a guide at the side'. Much more of a mentor role for the teacher and more of a self learning and self determination role for the pupil. We have connected Schools in Wales to Schools in Ipswich so that children can interact and perform projects and experiments together. The results have been enlightening, and the teachers change, as do the pupils, and they do work together in new ways - it works! It does not destroy the old paradigm. drive out the old methods and ways, but augments them, it adds a new dimension, new opportunities.

At higher levels in education, experiments are already underway with virtual universities and courses. In 1994 we brought in Professor Bill Buxton from the University of Toronto to give a lecture to 80 students on our MSc course at BT Laboratories. This he performed in a one hour multimedia format followed by a tutorial session on a dial up digital circuit across the Atlantic. Direct from his office in Toronto he appeared on an 8 foot screen in a lecture theatre . This year we launch an entire Masters programme on a similar basis with interactive terminals on the desk involving multimedia screens and cameras that allow people to work and interact together in virtual, not real, space! The Open University has conducted experiments with Summer Schools and lectures on line as well as new forms of interactive teaching. Globally an increasing number of such experiments are being performed and on each occasion there is some positive outcome. That is not to say that this technology will wipe out complete areas, but it will provide a new alternative. The days of the single degree, education for life, are over. Many first and higher degrees now have a half life of a few years and a continual top up process throughout a working life is the new order. So, 'just in time education and training' is the future! This technology offers the prospect of a degree from your desk at work or at home.

Recently I was in a lecture where a pundit declared that the screen would never take over from paper. But it already has! Broadly speaking 60% of us spend more time on the screen then we do on paper and that percentage will increase. That is not to say we will stop using paper for it is an extremely user friendly environment, but it does mean that we will increasingly spend time interacting on a screen because it is more versatile, adaptive and powerful. Perhaps more invidious is a future where no computer access means no education, and no IT skills means no job! In many sectors IT skills are now as important as being able to read and write. My sector is already there!

So what happens next? We have already extended sight and sound in computing and telecommunications. Next is the prospect of touch and prosthetics extended from the body into real and computer environments so we can feel and touch in both the real and virtual worlds. Complete immersion by sight, sound and feel is in its infancy. Its perfection will see the realisation of the experience society, an ability to try and experience anything, anytime, anywhere. Then we can add 'just in time experience' to our list of abilities. A bit far fetched? Not really! On line medical operations on artificial and real humans have already been performed in the USA and UK. Engineers and scientists have been transported into the world of the molecule, the atom and information itself in experiments to push the frontier of interaction further. For the first time we see in prospect an ability to teleport expertise rather than transporting bodies! In another decade, or two, perhaps we can all enjoy that 'just in time experience'.

Embracing new technologies is seldom easy, and indeed the industrial revolution is littered with successes and tragedies. Our challenge is to adopt new technologies at an ever faster rate. The advantage that we now enjoy is an ability to bend the technology into the human being, as opposed to bending the human beings into the technology. It is visible worth that will make this technology successful through benefits to society and mankind. Interestingly young people now interact with computers from the age of less then one year old and have an expectation of the technology improving and being available. Unfortunately many decision and policy makers do not. Perhaps age is the real challenge!