Peter Cochrane

Professor Peter Cochrane is a man with uncommon sense. One of Britain's leading technology futurists and a former of head of research at British Telecom labs, Cochrane is the author of Uncommon Sense as well as the founder of Concept Labs. We talked to Professor Cochrane about next generation fiber optic connectivity, Web 2.0 and how butterfly wings are the best way to make sense of the future of technology.

LISTEN TO COCHRANE and KEEN

Comments

[Suz]

An interesting interview with Cochran, who has been a futurist for a long time now. But didn't he work for British Telecom in the late 80's when they were telling us that 1200 bits a second was the maximum we would ever see from copper lines?

Cochran has utopian views on unlimited broadband and Web 2.0 content, and he may be right. He doesn't see any deficit in turning 11 year-olds into online traders, and he looks forwards to an unlimited on-line life for us all.

It's an entrancing vision for him, and like so many Gods of The New Future, he presents Web 2.0 as a technology driven by commerce which will enrich all our lives. Scary stuff indeed.

Cochran is a bluff sort of chap who wants to enrichen us with 100mb/s uncontended connections to the Internet, zapped down the gazillion miles of unused dark fibre that British Telecom installed in the UK during the Nineties, when it was still funded by taxpayers.

Soon, we're all going to be fitted with RFID chips, GPS trackers and cranial WiFi implants, and need never leave the house again. Our children will be able to post unlimited movies of kittens on skateboards to YouTube, and we'll be video-conferencing with the office on our 2 metre wide-screen TV, while we're in the bath. Unless we're watching 2 million channels of advertising on it.

Maybe he needs to read AK's new book.

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