Gaze into my crystal ball...

December 23, 2005 9:33 AM

BT Technology Timeline 2006-2051 It's interesting to see a major company such as BT set a timeline such as this, especially as they say thier 1990 timeline has had around 80% accuracy. They predict a supercomputer as powerful as the human mind in 2006, self aware computers that pass the turing test by 2020, and the rise of a global computer dictator by and artificial brain around 2040. After that its hard to predict, you know with the singularity coming and all... Some of the interesting things they predict: genetically engineered teddy bears; androids form 10% of the population around 2015; the Matrix is created, 2030; thought recognition as input device by 2014; the list goes on and on. Discuss. [via]
posted by daHIFI (43 comments total)

I tried several double post checks for this, as it's from August and I can't believe that it hasn't been posted before.

/me crosses fingers.
posted by daHIFI at 9:34 AM on December 23, 2005

Not as interesting as the predictions of Dr. Mysterian:

By 2035, Santa Claus will no longer deliver lumps of coal to naughty children. Instead he will deliver interior design catalogs.

posted by maxsparber at 9:46 AM on December 23, 2005

Who the hell is BT?
posted by mischief at 9:49 AM on December 23, 2005

Skynet is upon us.
posted by caddis at 9:49 AM on December 23, 2005

Hahahahahahahah.

(breaths)


Hahahahahahahah.

Androids form 10% of the population in nine years? Wtf ever.
posted by delmoi at 9:49 AM on December 23, 2005

Worst

Interface

Ever.

posted by CynicalKnight at 9:51 AM on December 23, 2005

BT is British Technology, sort of like venture capitalists but they take very active roles in the companies and technologies that they develop.
posted by caddis at 9:53 AM on December 23, 2005

2007: Designers abandon Flash after lynchings by frustrated users.

In all seriousness, there's a gaping hole in their future plans -- somewhere in there we're going to have to deal with the exhaustion of fossil fuels, and quite likely with global warming, or else there aren't going to be android armies and Skynet but people in farmhouses huddling around wood fires.
posted by lupus_yonderboy at 9:56 AM on December 23, 2005

"BT is British Technology..."

Like I asked originally, who the hell is BT?
posted by mischief at 10:00 AM on December 23, 2005

Where's the original timeline? That's more interesting.
posted by geoff. at 10:04 AM on December 23, 2005

BT is British Telecom, the UK telecommunications giant
posted by A189Nut at 10:05 AM on December 23, 2005

BT = British Telecom (not technology).
posted by devbrain at 10:06 AM on December 23, 2005

nine years does seem like a long way off del, but one of the things that the singularity and the accelerating rate of progress and change shows us is that as time goes on, we increase the amount of innovation and progress that happens in a given amount of time.

One could argue that all of the progress that has been made in the past 10 years is equivalent to all that of the 50 years or century before it. The last century = to the previous 2000 years and so on. The 5 years hence will see the same amount of progress made as in the last 10, until each month in the 2040's will see the same amount of technical innovations as 2000-2005.



Take the internet, which has changed the world in 10 years. One could argue that Google has changed it again in the past 5 years, and that the next paradigm shift (ubiquitous WIFI, symantic web?) will take less time that that. How long do you think it would take speec recognition on par with Star Trek's computer to change the world? A year, a few months?

One can look at the human genome project as a good example of the human tendency to underestimate the near present and overestimate the long term. (and forgive me if my dates are off a bit, i just want to get the general idea across) Halfway thru the 10 year project researchers were only 5% completed and naysayers believed there was no way that the project could complete. The sheer number of people that joined the project, the increase in computer processing and other advances eventually lead to the project being completed 18 months ahead of schedule.

And while I agree that androids everywhere might seem like a silly idea, consider that Sony already has the prototypes :)
posted by daHIFI at 10:08 AM on December 23, 2005

a supercomputer as powerful as the human mind in 2006

What does this mean, exactly? 2006 is two weeks away.
posted by ZenMasterThis at 10:09 AM on December 23, 2005

Oops
posted by caddis at 10:10 AM on December 23, 2005

Here's a link to the info page that has a link to a non flash version and full details of each point on the graph:
http://www.btplc.com/Innovation/News/timeline.htm
posted by daHIFI at 10:10 AM on December 23, 2005

1990 timeline. I think I missed the real time language translation and the retinal implants linked to external video cameras in 2004, and if I could have bought a 1.5 meter diagonal flat screen monitor for £2000 in 2002, I'm going to be pissed.
posted by queen zixi at 10:18 AM on December 23, 2005

Never mind, that's 2000. So it's even wronger.
posted by queen zixi at 10:20 AM on December 23, 2005

Mr. Plea, predicts that the Internet will crash in 8 days when the little Y2K.6 bug shows its ugly face.
posted by wizop at 10:29 AM on December 23, 2005

Ditto Cynical Knight. I've moused and clicked all over this thing and can't make heads or tails of it. I guess one of their predictions is, 2006: linear text is abolished.
posted by beagle at 10:30 AM on December 23, 2005

I do like how time travel will be invented before FTL travel, but after "creation of Star Treks Borg". Haven't the Borg already been invented? I'm pretty sure I saw them on TV 15 years ago...Unless they were using that time travel technology to beam "reality tv" back from the future.
posted by blue_beetle at 10:50 AM on December 23, 2005

I applaud the forward thinking of all this, but I think their optimism clouds their prognistication. Another vision-tech-future site without the annoying interface is LongBets.org
posted by stevis at 11:50 AM on December 23, 2005

I mean really. I think half the techno-utopians on the net could come up with a better time-line given a day with google. Most of this is either blindingly obvious or warmed-over Kurzweil, and the rest is silly.

Kitchen rage caused by electronic gadgets 2011
Computer enhansed dreaming 2015

Publicity grabbing nonsense, with a useless interface and no qualification for the few interesting but meaninglessly vague predictions. And no real consideration of any possible global catatastrophes such as war, market crash, energy/water/food crises etc.

Coincidentally found Bill Joy's Hi-Tech Warning today, painting a slightly less rosy picture.
posted by MetaMonkey at 12:27 PM on December 23, 2005

Wake me for the jet-packs and sex robots. kthxbye.
posted by bardic at 1:03 PM on December 23, 2005

2060 - bt invents useable interface with readable fonts ... even the pdf link is hard to read
posted by pyramid termite at 1:23 PM on December 23, 2005

i just realized there are no flying cars anywhere on this thing.

How long do I have to wait!!
posted by daHIFI at 1:38 PM on December 23, 2005

How can they hope to be taken seriously without something passing for analysis? Am I missing the part where they make their claims testable, or justify them?

daHIFI, your thinking is clouded. Define some terms and search for some real evidence! You are doing a little better than BT, but not much...

For example, yes Sony does have a prototype robot. What does it do? More importantly, what does it do that people want/need? What will the manufacturing cost be in the near term? What technology will be needed to make that price reality?

All that is the easy stuff... Consider that if the rate of change (or progress if you prefer) is accelerating, then our ability to predict what will come must be deteriorating equivalently (see lupus_yonderboy's and MetaMonkey's comments for just a couple of the reasons).
posted by Chuckles at 2:35 PM on December 23, 2005

This is fucking retarded. BT have no interest in making this realistic. They have interest in making it as ridiculous as possible so people talk about BT.
posted by Protocols of the Elders of Awesome at 3:16 PM on December 23, 2005

Ridiculous indeed. There are numerous possibilities for the nature of the next historical Singularity, many of which are extremely unpleasant (global thermonuclear war, for instance).

This series of disjointed "predictions" seems to focus on the cybernetic route, but does an extremely poor job of understanding it. This route hits the knee of its asymptotic curve once an intelligent entity (almost certainly cybernetic, but not inevitably) gains the ability to increase its own intelligence.
posted by bshock at 3:59 PM on December 23, 2005

Would an intelligent entity necessarily want to increase its own intelligence? I haven't met any smart people with a burning desire to be surrounded by even more (relatively) clueless doofi.
posted by flabdablet at 4:43 PM on December 23, 2005

Maybe the point of these types of predictions is that they become self-fulfilling, somewhat like Moore's Law?

However, since the rate of change is accelerating (i.e., it is exponential rather than linear), it becomes harder and harder to make predictions for shorter and shorter timescales. New ideas flow from new technologies and scientific breakthroughs. Imagine 50 years ago trying to anticipate not just microchips and the internet, but also all the consequences of those developments. How hard then do you think it is to predict 20 years in advance if we get 50 years worth of progress in the next 10 years?

Maybe it is better to look at the big picture. There are certain human drives and ambitions that will likely determine the directon of technology; the quest for longer life, health and beauty, the desire to create greater-than-human intelligence, the ongoing struggle for power and influence over others via political, economic and miltary means. And of course sex, sex, and more sex.

We will have very little chance of accurately predicting the future beyond the creation of greater-than-human intelligences in combination with true nanotechnology. That is when things will really start to change.

You know, things are going to be really different!... No, no, I mean really different!
—Mark Miller (computer scientist) to Eric Drexler, around 1986
posted by Meridian at 5:06 PM on December 23, 2005

flabdablet - Would an intelligent entity necessarily want to increase its own intelligence?

You can regard intelligence as a tool used to amplify your effectiveness. With better tools you can discover more, you can compete more, and you can survive in harsher environments.

If we take humans as an example of an intelligenct entity then there is already a desire among some to increase their mental capacities through means such as nootropics (smart drugs), especially amongst students prior to exams.
posted by Meridian at 5:25 PM on December 23, 2005

a supercomputer as powerful as the human mind

sounds like meaningless rhetoric to me. I mean, powerful in what sense exactly? Last I checked, all my mind could do was think, sometimes well, sometimes not so well. My body does all the rest.
posted by arakasi at 7:35 PM on December 23, 2005

They should fix the bloody payphone at the end of our street.
posted by Tarn at 8:21 PM on December 23, 2005

flabdablet: "Would an intelligent entity necessarily want to increase its own intelligence? I haven't met any smart people with a burning desire to be surrounded by even more (relatively) clueless doofi."

Do you have a burning desire to be surrounded by and converse with cockroaches or do you just squash them? The first transhuman entity would likely exterminate humans, I know I would.
posted by kush at 8:26 PM on December 23, 2005

*steps away from kush*
posted by effwerd at 8:32 PM on December 23, 2005

"However, since the rate of change is accelerating (i.e., it is exponential rather than linear), it becomes harder and harder to make predictions for shorter and shorter timescales."

Meridian, do you have any evidence for that? I would agree that Moore's Law seems to have held true for some decades. But I don't think that means that the overall rate of change of human society, outside of consumer electronics, is changing that quickly.
posted by dd42 at 10:15 PM on December 23, 2005

dd42, beyond consumer electronics, all forms of information technology are demonstrating increasing rates of change. And this in turn supports advances in other areas such as DNA sequencing (mentioned above by daHIFI) and miniturization of mechanical devices. There is actually allot of evidence for this and it is especially noticable when viewed from a longer-term perspective. For example, this article -- Forecasting the Growth of Complexity and Change -- looks at the really big picture, and the trends are very evident. You can also read what Ray Kurzweil has to say on the subject in his article "The Law of Accelerating Returns".
posted by Meridian at 11:49 PM on December 23, 2005

Turing, not turing
posted by gene_machine at 2:10 AM on December 24, 2005

For example, this article -- Forecasting the Growth of Complexity and Change -- looks at the really big picture, and the trends are very evident.

Meridian, the paper you reference concludes that the rate of change is declining, having peaked in 1990. It also contradicts Kurzweil, arguing that the singularity concept is absurd:

In other words people who will still be alive in 2026—i.e., the generation of people born in the mid 1940s or later—will have witnessed before they die all the change that can ever take place!
posted by mek at 4:25 AM on December 24, 2005

thanks for this nice read, they're a little too fast imo

exponential change is not true for planet earth

personally i love the shadowrun timeline
posted by suni at 2:25 PM on December 24, 2005

i just realized there are no flying cars anywhere on this thing.

How long do I have to wait!!
posted by daHIFI at 1:38 PM PST on December 23 [!]

That idea was abandoned years ago. Now they're working on driving airplanes.
posted by Citizen Premier at 12:54 AM on December 25, 2005

Protocols is on the money.
posted by Acey at 2:28 PM on December 25, 2005