Name: The year 2050.
Age: -34.
Appearance: Whatever your augmented-reality contact lenses show you. In general: shiny.
How do you know all this stuff about 2050? Do you have a special guessing machine? Yes. I call it Dr Ian Pearson.
One of the lesser-known Time Lords? No. A futurologist, which means he’s an expert on how technology is going to change the world.
I see. It must be quite easy to be an expert in something that doesn’t exist yet. It’s not easy to be right, and Pearson’s new report on the home of 2050 predicts some quite startling things. Mainly that you’ll be able to stop cleaning and tidying altogether.
Already there, man. Yes, but in 2050 there will be miniature robots to do it for you. And your cooking. Plus your clothes will be made of special fabric that cleans itself, drones will fly around killing bacteria and your furniture will wrap around you when you sit down.
How comfortable yet terrifying. Pearson reckons it will be lovely. “We’ll have a nicer lifestyle with more time for relaxation,” he says.
And just a soupçon of catastrophic climate change? Maybe, although he also thinks that nuclear fusion and renewable energy will have done away with fossil fuels by 2050. And your pets will be able to talk and you’ll have most of your sex with machines.
That sounds like a challenge! Special sex robots, he means, not household appliances.
Oh. And you’ll be immortal.
Eh? By uploading your mind to a computer, it will be possible to stay “alive” for ever. Of course, that might mean living in the Matrix.
How seriously should I take all this stuff? I mean, it’s fun and everything, but is Pearson always right? “I have demonstrated about 85% accuracy when looking 10-15 years ahead,” he says.
Do you know how he got that figure? I do not. But in 1999, he promised “artificial eyes by 2020 almost as good as the real thing, maybe even as good as the real thing”.
There are three and a half years left. Give it time. He also said: “We think we’ll achieve man-machine equivalence in a computer by about 2015.”
I’m not sure that happened. I suppose it depends which man.
Do say: “Immortality gets a bit dull after the first thousand years.”
Don’t say: “Where’s my jet pack?”
