By Ben King, 17 January 2002 17:15
COMMENT The well dressed gentleman in 2010 will wear solar-powered clothes and video jewellery, and defend himself with a killer robot insect, according to the boffins at BT's optimistically-named research subsidiary, BTexact. As the press release that crossed our newsdesk today notes, the future is "hard to predict". But Ian Pearson, who BTexact describes as its "long range radar", has jotted down the 25 things that are lighting up his screen at the moment. Later this year we'll see intelligent cardigans that alter their thermal properties depending on the weather. Hopefully this won't mean a return to the grim days of the Global Hypercolor T-shirt, which changed colour when the wearer got sweaty. Video jewellery is an idea we like very much indeed - will the people working on this please send us a prototype? Perhaps a medallion with a video of Charlton Heston's chest hair or choice scenes from Planet of the Apes? Some of the near-future ideas seem viable - cat's eyes with speed cameras, better contrast on laptop screens and a kitchen food tester that identifies food bugs. We suspect Mr Pearson has been going to the cinema a bit, too, as many of his ideas have already been explored by Hollywood. He reckons Arnold Schwarzenegger-style video glasses will be in our stockings for Christmas 2003, the first extinct species will be resurrected in 2006 (dodo jalfrezi, anyone?), and a simple portable translation device will appear by 2007. He obviously hasn't been watching Top of the Pops recently, though. He predicts that a synthetic celebrity will be 2010's biggest earner, which must be a long way wide of the mark. Cher's accountant will be glad to hear it, though. The strangest prediction of all is the insect warrior robot coming to a battlefield hopefully not to near you in 2010. They're already using unmanned 'drone' aircraft in Afghanistan. These will probably be similar but much smaller. It's just sad to hear that BT won't have rolled out World Peace by then. Domestic peace may be a reality by then, brought to you with home anti-noise technology from 2010. Just when we were planning to retire to the country, too. Pearson makes no mention of seeing a competitive broadband market or an unbundled local loop in the next ten years. We hope that's because BT is so committed to making it happen that no futurologist would bother to point it out. Surely we can't be wrong?
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