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All change for the world as we know it
When Peter Cochrane joined the then GPO in 1962 he was a linesman in a state monopoly that controlled the delivery of every letter and phone call in the UK. Today, after a long career rising through the ranks of BT and the related academia of communications science, Cochrane is the phone giant's resident futurologist.

As chief technologist of BT, based at its leading-edge Martlesham laboratories in Norfolk, Cochrane's brief is to draw up a vision for the way society will drive and respond to the huge changes technology is beginning to wreak on everyday lives and jobs. It is a role Cochrane clearly adores, combining it with the Collier chair for the public understanding of science and technology at the university of Bristol.

He lives with the future too. The Cochrane family home boasts a broadband network linking PCs in various rooms and a high-speed connection to the net comparable to that of most medium-sized businesses.

Cochrane is comfortable with a lifestyle that, for most of us, is probably just around the corner. Like all futurologists, he knows his anticipation of the coming years is, to some extent, a stab in the dark. But the trends are fast becoming apparent, he says, and will shake the roots of society more thoroughly than most of us appreciate.

One of the biggest changes he foresees lies in the transformation of the internet into an all-embracing medium that extends far beyond the PCs we use to go online today. "Everything in the world is going to get networked over the next 10 years," he says. "As a result, things will become more chaotic and assets will change fundamentally. Companies will come to prominence and die faster. People will work for more organisations during their lives, and more companies at the same time."

What is the driver?
The arrival of a new generation of networked devices, linked by high-speed landline and wireless systems and so easy to master that we will take to them as easily as we use the phone today.

In Cochrane's new world the net becomes about much more than a way of sending e-mails or shopping online. Each of us will have a pocket device which embraces the current roles of phone and palmtop computer but adds some new functions, too. When you want to take part in a video-conferencing call, a camera on the device will despatch your picture across a broadband wireless link in real time. If you want to listen to music, the same unit will tune into a net radio station or download digital songs that you can copy to your home hi-fi system.

A global positioning satellite chip in the device will pinpoint your exact location as you travel. If you need a hotel, restaurant or theatre tickets, the unit will find local information and make reservations for you on the spot. Instead of the bar codes we use to store product information today, tomorrow's goods will come with a tiny chip. Your pocket wonder will be able to read it, enabling you to point the device at a carton of prepared food and see the precise ingredients and even the farm where the vegetables were raised. When you get the meal home, your microwave will cook the food automatically, according to the instructions encoded in the product.

In Cochrane's vision such capabilities will become everyday and available through inexpensive pocket units we all carry as a matter of course. The long-standing notion that technology is expensive, scary and unreliable will disappear.

In Britain, these changes in attitudes spell huge shifts in the nature of our economy. Manufacturing, in Coch-rane's view, is shrinking, and deservedly so. "Five hundred years ago 85% of people were in the fields creating food. Now less than 1% of the population is involved in food production. The number of people needed to make and create things is less than 15% and will be 5% in the next 10 years."

Some of the structural changes under way will be seen in sectors such as the automotive industry, which is already becoming more of an assembler of parts made elsewhere than a manufacturer of bespoke individual parts. Just as PC chips invariably come from a handful of manufacturers, such as Intel or AMD, car components will be mass produced commodities.

Products will come to be differentiated through design and customer service, not what lies beneath the surface. As manufacturing moves to largely automated plants in low-cost parts of the world, skilled local workforces in Britain will focus on sales, marketing, design and product development.

How well placed are existing companies for this coming shift?
Poorly in most cases, Cochrane believes, citing the experiences of the banking and financial industries. Keen to benefit from the huge cost savings available from new technology, they are now embarked upon extensive campaigns to close expensive physical branch networks but, in Cochrane's book, are failing to replace them with adequate replacements based on digital technology exploited to the full.

"There are huge opportunities being missed in these fields. Our existing industries are very backward in using the tools. You can see as much in a hotel where you can go back every week and still have to fill in the same registration form to tell them what kind of room you would like."

One huge problem already rearing its head is the skills shortage. "There is an incredible lack of trained people to do the right jobs. In the UK we are desperately short but the education system is treating people as if we were still in the business of manufacturing."

Staff shortages are just one reason why the average worker in most industries is becoming "asset rich, time poor", in other words well off but with little leisure time in which to enjoy his or her financial assets. "People will spend any amount of money to give them free time. It takes a certain attitude of mind to work 80 hours a week under constant pressure. I don't think this is sustainable in the long run."

Successful companies will, he thinks, have a guerrilla mentality, tearing up business models and strategies the moment they become out of date, without a second thought. And they will be forced to reward staff well, not just with competitive salaries but with stock options too. In the aggressive world around the corner, good employees will naturally gravitate to the best companies around and expect to be rewarded in stock. If the existing corporate hierarchies are unwilling to change, they will simply be bypassed by smarter, younger people or see their firms go down the drain.

"If we don't learn these lessons," Cochrane says, "we are going to be very poor. A lot of the old guys we have in companies today have hung onto their jobs by holding onto information in order to survive. Young people will just go straight past them. The biggest single obstacle to change today can be the average board member."

Can companies afford to ignore the future?
Not according to Cochrane. The fundamental shifts in the way individuals and companies work are already taking hold. Mobile phones, wireless data and fast home internet connections are beginning to mean that old ideas about fixed offices and static, nine-to-five jobs are meaningless. Someone hooked onto BT's new high-speed ADSL network at home can link to a private office internet and work just as efficiently as someone at a desk in the office. The arrival of very fast permanent net connections change the balance of teleworking. As far as the worker is concerned, he or she is just as much a part of the office network at home as in the office.

The introduction of high-speed wireless data access this summer will extend this instant and permanent connection to anyone with the right phone, palmtop or compatible notebook computer.

David Hewson