1. What do you foresee as the most significant development in communications technology over the next 100 years? And why?
PC: Low cost - always on - wireless bandwidth everywhere is it for me. IT and communication has to become like a light switch - always there and always working. The future of the global economy is about bits - their production, availability, delivery, processing and onward transmission. By 2010 about 95% of all communication will be machine to machine, and by 2050 there will be more machines than vertebrates on the planet.

2. In many respects, communication is replacing transport. Many of us work from home and don't need to commute. We can now shop on the Internet, and have the goods delivered to our doors. Perhaps in the future virtual reality and high-bandwidth communications will mean we can go anywhere and do anything without ever leaving the house. Do you think that's possible? Likely even? And why?
PC: Without doubt it will happen - we can do it now, but the computing power will not arrive in your home for another decade when PC power will be 1000x that of today, and so will the best networks.
But we will still want to do a lot in the real world too. VR augments our world - it does not replace it - and it means we can go do, see, experience things that are fundamentally impossible in reality.

3. Our growing dependence on communication makes electronic privacy an increasingly more important issue. With the e-commerce bill, the government proposes to make it an offence not to decrypt a document on when requested by the police.
PC: There are a lot of laws that people ignore or circumvent both legally and illegally - and increasingly the technology will be ten steps ahead of the politicians and lawyers. It is possible to drive a coach and horses through most legislation of this kind. We can easily encrypt information into photographs, movies or text messages. It is going to be pretty tricky to detect that a message has been encrypted at all!

4. In the future, will our communications be granted privacy or will our messages and transactions be monitored by the communications equivalent of street corner CCTVs?
PC: Perhaps! But remember, there has never been, and there never will be total privacy or secrecy. If someone really wants to hear you, see you, and read your documents it is very hard to stop them. And a lot of time they have to do no more than sit at your side while you use your mobile phone, or look over you shoulder as you work on your screen.

5. Some say that advanced communications might unify the world, ending wars and disputes, making us one happy "global village". Do you agree with this? And why?
PC: Yes to some extent - it removes the mystery and suspicion - and basically all humans are the same barring the constraints of politics and religion - once they have seen and heard their fellows plight they are immediately empathic and benevolent. So far IT and telecommunications has brought down several despotic regimes and limited the growth of others. On the downside it also tends to be an ideal medium for promoting the activities of the terrorist.