 Imagine being able to send your handshake and other physical sensations electronically. Science fiction? Not for futurologist Ian Pearson who will be a speaker at CiB's Conference in Chester in May. Steve Doswell went to meet him:
I spoke to renowned futurologist Ian Pearson on a day when his East Anglian home became a Christmas card scene.
“I’ve just been playing snowballs with the cat – one of the joys of working from home,” he tells me by way of introduction.
It was fitting because it was mid-December, amid the deepest snow locally in 25 years. But also because home-working is a major change to established work patterns and a recurrent theme in Ian’s observations.
Ian tracks and predicts developments in technology, business, society, politics and the environment. A maths and physics graduate, Ian’s earlier engineering career spanned aeronautics, cybernetics, sustainable transport and even electronic cosmetics. He can lay claim to several inventions, including text messaging, the active contact lens, and active skin. He was BT’s full-time futurologist from 1991 to 2007, but now works with Futurizon, a small futures institute.
He writes, lectures and consults globally on all aspects of the technology-driven future. He has written several books and made more than 450 TV and radio appearances. He is a Chartered Fellow of the British Computer Society, the World Academy of Art and Science, the Royal Society of Arts, the Institute of Nanotechnology and the World Innovation Foundation. In 2007 he was awarded a Doctor of Science degree by the University of Westminster.
His early CV – graduation from Queens University, Belfast and working for aerospace company Shorts – reflects his upbringing in Northern Ireland, where his parents moved from Cumbria when Ian was a child. Both places have left their mark on Ian’s very distinctive accent, as delegates to the CiB Conference in Chester in May will discover. Many also recall Ian’s last highly memorable conference performance for CiB in Wales in 2001. As vocations go, futurology isn’t exactly crowded territory.
I asked Ian how he’d taken his very singular career path: “At BT I’d been developing projects and even kit for the far-reaching future and had to consider how things were going to be. I started writing about the future in 1991. The company wanted me to write more, I liked it, they liked it, and until the bosses stopped me I was going to keep on writing!”
Ian’s then job title was executive engineer. He didn’t like it. Then, in 1993, The Sunday Times dubbed him a futurologist. He decided that it suited him a lot better and so an enduring identity was born.
There’s nothing new about star-gazing in all its forms. Ian has his own distinct take on this: “It’s one of the world’s oldest professions – along with prostitution! In former times they used to carve chickens open. It was not very effective. Then they became more sophisticated and began looking at the stars. But I don’t have lot of time for astrologists. There’s no mystical side to futurology. It’s about logical reasoning and extrapolation into the future.”
Ian was now getting into his stride.
As he riffed on, it became clear why he’s become so engaging as a futurologist.
“You can get semiconductor-loaded inks and then use fingernail printers to do complex graphics on fingernails. So why not print straight on to the skin’s surface and make complex patterns? You could also pick up electrical signals on skin.You could have a billion transistors in a skin cell by 2020. Even with hundreds of thousands of transistors you can do quite complicated electronics.
“You could go deep enough into nerve-endings so you could record signals in the nerves. If you can record them and replay them you’re recording a sensation, like a handshake. In a few years time you could feel a handshake via Skype.”
- CiB members can read the rest of the feature on the latest issue of Communicators, CiB's member magazine. You can also hear more from Ian at the CiB Conference in Chester in May 2010.
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