The Digital Future

BBC Radio 4 Start the Week - Presented by Andrew Marr, with guests Nick Harkaway, Anab Jain, Charles Arthur and Simon Ings.

I just caught the end of this programme on Bank holiday Monday morning and sought it out on Listen again section on BBC iplayer.

The discussion was over forty minutes long but discussed some very interesting things about the digital age and the next big idea.

In my research for my professional studies portfolio I had asked the professionals from the media that I had interviewed about the next big idea, so I was interested in how Andrew Marr’s guests would answer that question.

Nick Harkaway was talking about his recent book (The Blind Giant) which discusses the digital era. He explained that people see it as either a ‘dark place or a bright future.’ I was interested to hear his take on new technology as he went on to say that ‘it won’t just happen to us, we can shape it ourselves.’ We make the future as we go along. The digital world brings us opportunities. He expanded on the fact that as humans it is important to take ownership of digital technology.

Simon Ings writes a digital magazine which is linked to the New Scientist series.  He talked about Augmented Reality. He says ‘the best way to protect the future is to make it up.’ He went on to describe what augmented reality is. It is a way of sewing information into your picture plane or soundscape together with your mobile or digital glasses. The information is mapped in real time to connect us with our physical environment. So that when you call someone up on your phone you can see them sitting opposite you on a table. Perhaps no more long meetings with clients travelling to and from locations?

Anab Jain is the co-founder of Supaflux, a futurology company used by larger companies to test out ideas. I was interested to hear about Prosthetic Vision for blind people. This technology makes the damaged retinal cells sensitive to light when you wear a digital headset. Obviously it is so much more complex than that but it means that visually impaired people would be able to engage at some level with the sighted world. That really interests me as a photographer.

What really caught my attention in this interview was her explanation of a 5th Dimension Camera. She is currently working with market research scientists in Oxford. The camera, perhaps still some 20-30 years in the making, will process information in a parallel way. It will take photographs of people in a parallel world and it will bring back these images. It is a complete fictional prototype. The discussion also went on to describe the power that Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Twitter and Amazon have in controlling what we do. There was also a quote from William Gibson ‘The future is here, it is has just not been distributed.’

Listen again to this very interesting and thought provoking discussion about digital technologies. It will be available on iplayer for the next few days.

BBC Radio 4 Start the Week-Monday 7th May 2012

Listen to the discussion here
Nick Harkaway website here 

Want more? Check out Aleks Krotoski's 'The Digital Human' here