Tomorrow's World

In 1967, the BBC's science and technology show Tomorrow's World (TW) featured a businessman working in his own home. The show predicted that a time would come when "every home will have its own terminal plugged into a central brain." In other words they predicted the internet and home working...48 years ago. The programme also showcased things like ATM's, compact discs, personal stereos, barcodes and camcorders. They also predicted that by now we would all have personal robot assistants, flying cars and floating bicycles, which we haven't, but even when they got it wrong the gravitas of Raymond Baxter and the plausibility of James Burke made even their more outlandish predictions seem believable.

Raymond Baxter.

One thing that TW frequently returned to was how the world of work would change. Apart from the working from home, plugged into a central brain, which they got spot on, they often suggested that by now we would all be working fewer hours for the same sort of pay, that our leisure time would be enhanced and that our working lives would be made easier by technology. Well, yes and no. They were right to predict the increased presence and importance of technology and mechanisation in work, but they fell into the utopian trap of believing that this would allow people to work fewer hours. They predicted a sort of work-life balance that many employers believe they provide but few actually do. While TW predicted that people would work fewer hours it seems that many people are working longer hours and will retire later than they were when TW was being broadcast (1965-2003).

Tomorrow's World generally had a positive view of the future. The show looked at technology and assumed that it would be developed in a way that would benefit us. The reality is that for all of the benefits we may receive from technology, there is much that we do well to treat with some scepticism and suspicion. In 1965 Raymond Baxter introduced a feature on early CCTV cameras being introduced above jewellery shops in Hatton Garden. "Are there going to be any private lives left in tomorrow's world?" A quite prescient remark given the amount of CCTV cameras, speed cameras, congestion charge cameras and the like that infest our world today. As recent stories tell us, it isn't just cameras in the street, the shopping centre and the bank that are watching us, even our televisions are watching us rather than us just watching them. Well, actually not watching us, but they are listening to us as the story about Samsung's smart TVs collecting data about us showed. It was only when that story first surfaced that I realised that TVs could do that sort of thing; I was at first relieved that I don't own a Samsung, but then read that LG TVs can do it too, and guess what make I own?

But do I care if my TV is actually listening to me whitter on? Probably not and with a bit of luck the feedback it gets from our household about the paucity of good programmes to watch might just get the executives to get their acts together and produce some quality programming (but I doubt it). Equally do I care if my car is reporting where I am, where I've been and how long I was there? It isn't (at the moment) but we have seen that insurance companies already promote the "black box" recorder that provides data on how drivers drive, speed, braking, that sort of thing, with the stated aim of helping bring down your insurance premiums. Will that ever become compulsory? Certainly if driverless cars ever become a reality, and as the UK government has now given the go ahead for testing, maybe they will, sooner or later, then this sort of data is going to be collected whether we like it or not.

Of course our phones, our sat-navs and those cameras on the Dartford Crossing and the London congestion charge zone already know where we've been and when. Our credit and debit cards provide data on where we have shopped and when. Our Oyster cards extract data on what buses, tubes and trains we have used, what journeys we have made and when. In short there is little that we can do, at home, at work or between the two, at leisure and in employment that is not captured and which can therefore potentially be used. Many people say that if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear, which is true up to a point. Where this data starts getting used in ways we would prefer it would not starts with apparently innocent things. Tailored advertising for instance. If systems know who you are, when you are in certain places and why, advertising can be customized to your habits. Imagine your smart TV, listening to you switch to Channel Four to watch Hollyoaks and say, when the sponsor's name (it is Domino's pizza at present) is announced, "Boy I fancy a pepperoni pizza," relays that information and suddenly your smartphone bleeps to announce an text from Pizza Hut offering discounted pizza. Unlikely? For all you know it is already happening, all those little coincidences, "Hey, we were just talking about getting a new dishwasher and what do you know, I just got an email from Currys; they have some great reductions on dishwashers" are not necessarily coincidences.

Personalised advertising, like that suggested in Minority Report, may become the norm.

In theory, and on the "nothing to hide, nothing to fear" basis, this is all pretty harmless stuff. So what if advertisers tailor their commercials to your needs, less irrelevant stuff to ignore and who knows, perhaps it will put sellers and buyers together on a more efficient foundation, but there are likely to be more insidious things going on, things that you and I have not dreamt of, which we will be influenced by and affected by without our even being aware. We are now so reliant on technology in general and the internet in general that the influence of these has become so all pervasive that we are in danger of both taking it for granted and becoming totally reliant upon it. Stephen Hawking told the BBC just last December that, "The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race" and while I am sure he wasn't considering the possibility of Terminator style machines wiping out the human race (at least I hope not), his point that machines, once they achieve genuine artificial intelligence would out-evolve humanity is plausible and worrying.

The point about machine intelligence is that, unlike Skynet, it would not be necessary for it to start a nuclear war to subjugate mankind, all it would need to do is switch off the internet. On second thoughts it wouldn't need to do even that, just use the internet to manipulate us. And who is to say that isn't already happening; if it is subliminal the point is that we would be blissfully unaware. Pizza anyone?