Whilst there is an abundance of technology to address the fundamental problems associated with an increased expectation of improved life style, it is certainly not the case that every human being on the planet can enjoy the standard of energy consumption of the USA where the average person consumes 10kW of heating, air conditioning, physical transport, lighting and other services. If mankind is to live and prosper and maintain the planet in an habitable state, then a much lower level of consumption is necessary. As the energy falling on earth from our sun amounts to 1kW per square meter, and given the efficiency of conversion from light to electricity, plus the available area for collectors, we might assume a target of 1kW per human as a reasonable objective. However, physical travel represents a primary activity with 170Bn passenger miles consumed in the UK just to get to work. Much of this could be avoided today, and should be negated by information technology before the turn of the century. Not only is travel expensive in raw materials and energy, it also consumes vast amounts of time, which is largely wasted, with over ?15Bn per year in traffic jams for the UK (and ?10Bn of this in London) alone.

Information Technology (IT) is the only sector delivering an exponential growth in capability whilst reducing raw material and energy costs. Since 1960 our ability to transport information over any distance has doubled each year whilst the use of raw materials and cost has reduced. Today, optical fibre transports over 80 per cent of our telephone, fax and data communication, and has an inherent capacity to transport the entire contents of over 1000 human minds at the same rate as the fastest express train. Similarly the packing density of electronic circuits, information storage and processing power has doubled every year with power consumption, raw material and cost falling exponentially. We now enjoy a computing and communicating capability that was unimaginable in the 1960s. In ten years we can expect to see computers 1000 times more powerful than those of today. Within twenty years the power will have increase to a million times, and it is a distinct possibility that in thirty years time the power will have increased to a billion times. Machines of such power and capability will evolve human characteristics of adaptability, intelligence and personality. They will also realise a computing and communications infrastructures that can be accessed by the entire population. IT will no longer be the preserve of an elite who have the opportunity, access and skill sets that are necessary to drive today's user unfriendly devices. Talking to the machine, having hands in the screen and being able to see people and information in electronically generated environments will become the norm.

It is already evident that the latest technological developments in artificial intelligence, visualisation, virtual reality and telepresence will realise new capabilities. We were not designed to cope with spread sheets, or the written word, keyboards and small screens that only present a partial picture of a wider activity. Imagine a virtual reality interface with your visual cortex flooded by information from spectacle mounted or active contact lenses augmented by directional audio input, tactile gloves and prosthetic arms and fingers that give you the sensation of touch, resistance and weight. Imagine also the prospect of a surrogate head that is either machine or human that can allow you to be teleported into environments anywhere on the planet with great accuracy and reality. This might lead to the euphemism: 'what you see I see, what you hear I hear, what you feel I feel'. Alternatively contemplate the convenience of large visual displays with high definition in two or three dimensions. People could appear in full proportion, with the right colour, a voice that emanates from the lips and not from a box at the side, in a distortion free and convincing manner. All of these technologies lead to a feeling of being there. What is more, they are already available at various stages of research and development. What is their impact going to be?

Why do we travel vast distances just to cluster together to work in offices? The answer to this question is both complex, but reasonably obvious - we come together to communicate, interact and organise ourselves in a rather tribal and ritualistic way. With information technology this is no longer necessary nor relevant in the strict sense. Many already go home to do real work. The office has become an information exchange, an area of interaction, meetings and high chemistry. Solitude, isolation and concentration have to be sought in new places. Moreover, the chemistry of interaction can be achieved using an electronic medium and we face the prospect of increasing numbers of home, or dispersed, workers away from any centralised office. This is not in the far future, it is happening now, and is evidenced by the number of empty office blocks and buildings throughout the western world. It has been estimated that the empty office space across North America is equivalent to that occupied, or not, in San Francisco. In London it appears that a similar availability is being generated. Numerous UK companies are already moving towards 'hot desking', with the provision of fewer desks than people as changing habits release people from being in the office every day. This is a trend that will increase in concert with IT.

Quite understandably there is great concern over the decline of manufacturing industries and the changing work patterns. In the short term the drive for greater efficiency, improved output and migration from a manufacturing to an information society will involve some hardship and trauma for society. In the long term however, it has to be seen as part of a general migration that started thousand years ago. Ever since we migrated from hunting to farming we have been on a path that has seen 80 per cent of the population involved in farming only 500 years ago to less then 3 per cent today. The same is true for clothing production, the industrial revolution with its smokestack industries and more recently the electronic revolution followed by the present dominance of software. As each new wave of technology has peaked and been made increasingly efficient, it is being replaced by new alternatives. Today we are poised to see the emergence of information itself becoming a raw material - something we manufacture, prize, sell and perhaps most importantly of all, network. The number of people involved in this industry can be expected to rise rapidly, and hopefully it will utilise most of the wasted human talent overlooked in previous revolutions.

All of this does not deny the continued existence of farming, the manufacture of clothing, hard and soft technologies - quite the reverse. All of these activities are required, but our expectation is to make them far more efficient and less intensive in human terms. A net result will be a increased percentage of the population working in an information space that need not be location specific. Furthermore, our demands will move towards a requirement for information any time, any place, in the right form, on any terminal, and at the right price. It is interesting to note that when addressing a problem the finding and assembly of all the related information represents the major task and the least interesting one. It is the manipulation of the information it's preparation and presentation that require a great deal of human input and perhaps the former can be overcome by artificial intelligence in the form of autonomous software agents.

Let us contemplate the enormity of the problem we face in this coming information society. There are over 6M photographs of church windows in Europe. Within five years we may have video on demand systems offering a choice from 10,000 videos. The library of congress requires 35km of new book shelving every year to accommodate all the new publications. It has been estimated that the sum total of mankind's published material - and this is sometimes equated to knowledge itself - doubles every three years. It is also clear that a huge amount of information becomes irrelevant, out of date and represents a huge amount of clutter. The technologies to help us navigate through this field of information, find what we want, access and manipulate data are all under development. However, we might expect the year 2000 to be a bench mark in the creation of this new form of society. At this juncture much of the display, software, hardware platforms and interfaces will be available to a wide proportion of the population.

Why is all of this so exciting and why does it offer such tremendous otential? As a young engineer 20 years ago I performed measurements on undersea equipment that took a whole morning. Today the measurements take less then 15 seconds with automated test equipment. This is a result of positive technology feedback. The original lathe was made from wood and was extremely crude being powered by a man or a boy. Soon it was possible to make an even better lathe using the original to produce components to a better accuracy. At some point the wooden lathe reached its height of perfection and it was necessary to use metal to realise further improvement. To this day the lathe story continues. Granted the improvements are now incrementally smaller and smaller, but it is now possible to manufacture new forms of machines. The same is true across the broad front of technology. Mankind faces major problems in all areas of its activity. For example in medicine we have a population in the West that is getting older, it is highly unlikely that there will be the resources to provide the care that is necessary. In Japan programmes are underway to manufacture robots to take on the task of looking after an increasingly aged population. Other alternatives involve the teleportation of expertise, experience and presence itself. The technologies that allow surgeons to be positioned inside the human body through an endoscope or through the use of a surrogate head peering into an incision or an open mouth are already with us. The prospect of remote diagnosis, inspection and surgery is real. Initial experiments are underway on artificial humans and before long we will see surgeons in California performing operations in London. Robots are already being used in hip replacement, brain and eye surgery. The trip to a doctors surgery or the hospital outpatients department could thus become a much reduced activity by the year 2000. Further developments include the remote monitoring of patients through electronic interfaces mounted on the body. For the diabetic, drug and medicine dependent people of the world it is possible for them to be monitored at a distance by remote computers that can administer and optimise dosage. So far experiments have been confined to hospital wards but there is no reason why this cannot be extended into the environment at large.

All of these concepts can be extended to other disciplines including e repair and maintenance of oil rigs, electronic and power installations and even activities in the home. Being able to call experts, allowing them to see what you see, hear what you hear, and feel what you feel at a distance, and then have them guide you through the necessary steps to affect a solution is only a short step away. We might also anticipate that the very process of education will also change. In the UK there is not a single large university. Departments are small, staff are increasingly stressed with larger numbers of students and a wider range of courses to teach in a shorter time. Why do we have 15 lectures giving the same lecture on different days throughout the UK to different groups of students. It is possible for all the students to attend any one of the lectures, or indeed, for the one lecture course to be prepared and delivered by a small team at one university. This would allow specialism by the departments, an increased efficiency and depth of understanding, a real opportunity to conduct meaningful research and perhaps most valuable of all an ability to allow students to mix and match modules and create their own degrees at a distance. The distributed degree between five or six key universities would then be a real possibility.

All the technology we have briefly considered results in a reduced d to travel, a positive contribution to a greener planet, and a wider choice of experience for all concerned. The need to travel vast distances from home could be drastically reduced with the need for new forms of short distance transport perhaps we might even see the demise of the internal combustion engine and its deleterious effects on humanity and the environment. A further outcome is likely to be the restructuring of conurbations. As fewer people need to travel into cities and increasing numbers of office blocks become vacant there may even be a move to ruralise the environment, remove many of the buildings and return them to their former state. The distributed society working in an information world will create new environments, new cities of the mind, new places to meet and work. Again prototypes are already in the research laboratories and every day new ideas and formats emerge. The rate of change is unlikely to be limited by the evolution rate of the technology, more the inability of mankind and society to subsume these advances and make use of them in a positive and economic way. Already we see our children exhibiting tremendous willingness and ability to move into this new world of information and electronic interfaces - they do not present the problem. We do. The challenge has to be the ridged mind sets of the over thirties who will have to be weaned off the motor car, physical travel the mass use of paper and dependence on ancient modes of working. In the remaining years of their life these people are likely to see more change for mankind then has been experienced in the previous 100 years. A major challenge therefore will be the finessing of the technology to make it wholly acceptable to the greater part of the population. This will require some adept engineering to create new interfaces that are humanised and present a natural mode of emersion for the vast majority of the human population. If it is to work, the technology has to be available and accessible to all people of all ages. This probably represents the major challenge and is a vital one if mankind in to succeed in its efforts to create an environment in which we can live in harmony with nature.