From Weekend 1
around because by all accounts, it's going to be a rough, tough world out there what with the ageing profile of the West, the changing nature of work and the tyranny of technology which will, no doubt, continue to gallop along at a scarifying pace. The educated affluent can fantasise happily about the "intelligent homes" of the future, where the robot lawnmower mows, weeds and feeds; where the intelligent doors recognise family members by their faces and fingerprints, the weather sensitive windows clean themselves, and the domestic robots vacuum, clean, sort the clothes and prepare the day's calorie counted meals.
Best not to dwell, though, on the "information underclass", conjured up by some forecasters, for whom there will be no home shopping, tele networking and video conferencing. Left behind by the information revolution, fenced into their urban ghettos by squalor, ignorance and data deprivation, their only contact with the digitised society of the future will be when the facial recognition cameras operated by the data police spot them in a crowd in the wrong part of town.
But whatever we do to cope with the human fall out (and let's hope those plans are further advanced than our millennium celebrations), we cannot pull the shutters on technology. By 2005, one chip will be able to hold all 32 volumes of the Encyclopaedia Brittanica, pictures and text. In 25 years, computers will be a million times faster than they are today, working in a way that mimics the human brain. Already scientists are discussing ways of fitting chips inside the brain to improve memory and so provide us with a portable library literally inside our heads.
Flat video screens are being developed that will enable you to turn your entire wall in Dalkey into your mother's kitchen in Drumcollogher, with her as a lifesized image sharing the same virtual space. But, for the technologically terrorised (and take heart, a more enlightened society will learn to thank you for not hiding yourself away in your virtual attic turning into a virtual psychopath), the most important nugget to hold on to is that machines will only ever be as good as the humans who run them.
The following reads like something out of The X Files but it's true and it's almost here at a computer near you. Just that simple number 2-0-0-0 of the new century will be enough to send well over half of the computers around the world into a helpless spin. Their problem is simple: they won't recognise the year 2000 because all they know is the last two figures of the year (i.e. 96 for 1996).
THE solution is anything but simple. Uncorrected, when the seconds count down to that double zero, there will be enough confusion to delight even the most unreconstructed Luddite. The problem is compounded by the fact that 2000 is also a leap year and leap years within them happen only every 400 years.
So fearful is one American airline of what its computers might do, that it may ground its planes on January 1st 2000. Our own Government Departments - including Revenue and Social Welfare - will be trying to avoid disaster by committing hundreds of people to the task of unravelling the software. At the US Department of Defence alone, they estimate that it will cost $3 billion to sort it out - and this is where the X File factor comes in - will anyone be sorting out the ageing nuclear missile systems in outposts of the old USSR?
Could Nostradamus have a point? For banks and insurance companies, mistakes could be horrendous: "Imagine," said a lawyer "if pensions were paid too early or people were let off mortgage payments too soon . . ."
Imagine indeed - but let's not get too excited. One way or another, we will be affected. There are chips in virtually everything we use - lift systems, security systems, central heating, modern cars - and never doubt that we will end up paying for it all, because it's going to cost industry in Ire land alone up to a billion pounds to sort it out. And that's if they can do it in time, because the specialist programmers needed are so scarce that there is a real fear that some companies may go under.
Lawyers, of course, will be exceptionally happy bunnies as always, as computer makers, suppliers and maintenance companies brace themselves for a rash of expensive lawsuits for failing to spot the problem earlier.
And you were wondering where the jobs of the new millennium would be? Yes, my child, do law and you, dear, go study accountancy. So things won't change that much.
As for predictions: well, take health. One transplant surgeon has visions of everyone having a "self pig", who will be your immunological twin in porcine clothing. Need a heart or a kidney? Fetch your pig without fear of rejection - at least of the organ; the pig might have other views.
In travel, they say that high speed trains will eventually kill off short haul air travel across Europe while the arrival of magnetic levitation trains will transform commuting patterns, relegating the notion of long distance relationships to history. "Virtual" resorts will thrive, catering for the workers who will/may take only five days off at a time and will travel no more than three hours from home. By then of course, we may decide to increase the travel time a little and investigate what "life" is like on Mars or how the ice on the moon interacts with Absolut vodka. Then, watch out for a nostalgic return to road trips - and God forbid, road movies.
As for houses, living space or the illusion of space, says Sir Terence Conran, will.be the biggest luxury of the 21st century - so tremble at the thought of glorified bed sits with mini spa bathrooms and (if you're lucky) separate light and sound proofed bedrooms. You may, however, be one of those who will spend most of the time circumnavigating the globe (see computers can't do everything) and have no need of a home. For you, there will be an international network of "hometels" that will serve as homebase wherever you are wheeling out your favourite kinds of flowers, linens, bath products software etc. which are listed of course, on the global database.
FOR the occasional return to your (real) home town, the hometel group will store belongings and re instal them in your room for that nostalgic minibreak. Sounds a lot like home, really.
If that all sounds too alienating, then remember just two words for the next millennium: "Deliberate downshift". This is the great retreat from consumerism, back to home and hearth and running a business from your cyber cottage. Forecasters talk glowingly of a world of homeworking, flexitime and multiple employers (in fact, it sounds horribly like freelance journalism). Out of this, they conjure images of happy families in compact little business units, working from home, combining work, children and leisure in holistic heaven.
But is it realistic, you ask? Give me A.T. Mann anytime.