Inventing the Future: Jerry Fishenden at WorkTech '07

At the recent WorkTech '07 conference, held at the British Library in London, Microsoft's National Technology Officer, Jerry Fishenden, gave an insight into the workplace of the future:


"There's a lot of talk about not being able to predict the future. I'm not convinced that's the case: after all, if you don't understand where technology is already heading, much of what you plan and design today will be redundant by the time it's delivered (or sooner).

My colleague Bill Buxton points out in his book 'Sketching User Experiences' that "anything that is going to significantly impact us in terms of technology in 10 years time is already 10 years old". Which seems about right based on what I've witnessed in terms of how technology moves from concept through research and development and then finally into the market.

What is important however is that we understand the significance of the fact that we're entering a new phase in the digital age,one which seems to have attracted a wide range of labels: immersive / ambient / pervasive / ubiquitous. Much of it is generally best summarised in the phrase "invisible computing". An age when we will be surrounded by a mesh of devices with intelligence built into everything around us: not just networks such as the Internet, but buildings, places, everyday devices and our clothes. Gartner predicts that by the end of 2007 alone, more than 30 million of the sensor network nodes that will help flesh out this new age will be shipped in the United States and the European Union.

Experiencing developments like the British Library's 'Turning the Pages' on a touch screen provides some insight into where we are headed. The generation of surface based devices now emerging take us away from many of the concepts we've grown familiar with during the initial wave of computing such as icons, mice, cursors, buttons, scroll bars etc. These are replaced instead with far more intuitive, natural gestures. These devices are also more appliance-like in nature and support concepts such as multi-touch, rather than single touch. They also come in a variety of forms, from wall-mounted through to desktop-mounted.

Many of these screens can interpret gesture and movement without actually needing the hands and fingers of the user to come into contact with the surface. The screens can interpret movements, scaling images, rotating them in full colour, motion-rich 3D. Take the example of two colleagues collaborating with each other, apparently face-to-face courtesy of a two-way interactive screen in front of them, with one of them standing on one side of the screen, one on the other. In reality, one of them is in Tokyo, the other in New York. But these rich, two-way interactive surfaces are able to provide an experience of working directly opposite your colleague, of interacting with them in the same way we would if they were physically with us in the room. But this raises questions such as who is real and who "virtual" and where the work really happens! After all, the only combined output exists neither in New York nor Tokyo but somewhere in between, in the digital realm.

But this isn't just about the technology of course: it's as much about the way such technology impacts everything, from the way we live, learn, work and play through to the way in which policymaking will happen in the future. This is truly the heart of what we should mean by transformational government. As Alvin Toffler wrote in Rethinking the Future:

"The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn"

This concept of "unlearning" is probably the greatest challenge for us all. It is hard to set aside the way in which we currently do things and genuinely, constructively re-think and re-engineer them in new ways. There remain so many questions yet to be answered fully, amongst them:

- will social acceptance limit our ability to tap technology's full potential?
- does technology improve or disrupt social cohesion?
- how will concepts of liability and personal responsibility evolve?
- in an age when you can find answers in seconds using the Internet, is it not what you know but knowing where to find it and how to use (and verify) that information that counts, not rote learning?
- will we continue to be willing to trade our privacy for a free lunch in an all-immersive world?
- can citizens, organizations, policymakers and regulators keep up?

And if you think this is all some abstract future speculation and bears no relation to the problems you need to tackle today, you're wrong. The "real" world and the "virtual world" are already fused and all this is already beginning to happen. (Actually, "virtual" is entirely the wrong word: the digital domain is as real as anything in the physical world we know around us. Just ask anyone who's suffered from online identity or financial fraud).

Associated Link: Read more: NTO UK - Jerry Fishenden's technology policy blog

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