Plus ça change..... 

Some things don't change. 

Standing in our kitchens, we have more computer-power at our fingertips than it took NASA to put a man on the moon. But we don't start each day thinking "wow!" We start each day thinking "have I got time for another coffee?" and "is that smell coming from the dog or the toaster?" and "what the hell are those kids doing in the bathroom?" 

But then again.... 

While we're thinking about all that, somewhere there's a doctor offering a second opinion on a foetal heart-murmur, discussing a clear, sharp image of what's happening right now, inside a baby, inside a mother, inside a hospital 7,000 miles away.....

1 + 1 = infinity 

Add one child to one PC and the result is anyone's guess. 

The thing about computers is they go exactly where you want to go, and at your pace. You click, no one else. You're in control, limited only by your ability, your enthusiasm, and the resource at your fingertips. 

Add a simple modem to a PC, and 'the resource' is, quite literally, infinite. 

You can visit the Louvre, or New York's Museum of Modern Art. You can listen to music from Mozart or Mozambique or Michael Jackson. You can go to the zoo, to the library.....even to the movies! 

Teachers report strange consequences. Children queuing to get into class in the morning. Children staying behind after school. Children working on their own, using their own initiative, following their own game-plan, learning actively rather than passively. 

Children eager to learn and equipped to learn. 

Children getting results.

b-a-a 

c-a-r 

Which is the dumb animal? 

Sheep, it's true, ain't smart. Then again, sheep get to spend their days out in the fresh air, living a healthy life, having a good time. Well, as good as times get for a sheep. 

Car-commuters, on the other hand, spend hours a day imprisoned in a little tin box, surrounded by pollution, driven mad by stress and frustration, getting no exercise, no enjoyment, and nowhere fast. In fact, statistics suggest that in many world cities, traffic now moves more slowly than it did in the age of the horse and buggy. 

Little surprise, then, that so many are saying 'enough!', and heading back to be nearer their woolly alter-egos. As more and more people work with ideas, information and imagination rather than things, geography becomes ever less important. 

Why go to work, when your work can come to you down the line?

".....work hard at school, they say, so you can get a good job, so you work hard and get a good job and then you find you have to work eighty hours a week or people look sideways at you, and you certainly can't take your full holiday entitlement because no one else does, so sometimes it feels like you work to make money to live but then you haven't got any time to live so what's the point of making the money in the first place, and then they get the damn consultants in and they start re-engineering everything so you don't know whether you're coming or going, but you can see quite a few people are going, and not all of them willingly either, so you keep working harder just to try to keep up, but sometimes it feels like the faster you run the further the tape recedes and you start wondering is this what it's all supposed to be about, and you know there's another round of delayering or downsizing or rationalising or whatever the hell they've decided to call getting rid of people this month just around the corner and the one thing you can rely on is that if there's anything coming up that really matters and affects you, you'll be the last to know, and...." 

Business sans frontiers 

Welcome to a seamless future. 

Where nation states blend into trading areas, yesterday's arch-competitor becomes today's co-venturer, and footloose individuals add value here and there, now and then, this way and that, in a global economy on which, truly, the sun never sets. 

Where companies can number-crunch in New Delhi, design in Dusseldorf, market from Madison Avenue, yet remain a single entity, linked by a name, a mission, and a network of strands made out of sand, each rather thinner than a human hair. 

Has any organisation in human history ever come near the global company in its ability to accommodate different cultures, assimilate different perspectives, answer to different pressures, different sensitivities, different needs? 

The global organisation: overcoming boundaries, opening new horizons. 

Welcome to the future. It's here.

There's an Englishman, an Irishman, and a Korean... 

Global economy, global skills. And, very often, a local, urgent problem. 

Who can solve it? Where are they? How long will it take them to get here? And do they really need to? 

A specialist in Los Angeles can look directly at a microscope slide in Leicester, or Lagos, or Lahore - thanks to digital transmission's zero degradation, the visual experience is identical to being there. 

Or it's possible, using video-conferencing technology, to pool skills in a true global meeting: input from pretty much anywhere in the world, an interactive session of experts, all focused on a single issue. Without the time, hassle and expense of actually having to meet. 

Why move bodies round the globe, when minds can meet in virtual space and solve real-live problems?

e-zee come e-zee go 

E-mail is truly demcoratic communication. 

'Netiquette' says don't worry about speling or grammar or style. Just bash it down and crank it otu. 

You can E-mail anyone - the chances are, they'll 'take your call'. Filters are unusual - as long as you have Ms Big's E-mail address correctly, it's probably Ms Big who'll see what you have to say. 

Strange and unanticipated developments emerge. People readily E-mail complete strangers - people they'd never approach by any other means. Within companies, people communicate directly with colleagues regardless of hierarchical position or department. 

First perceived as cheap 'n cheerful communication, E-mail has emerged as rather more: a fundamental tool in the processes of change, which is playing a central role in the de-layering of organisations, the breaking down of barriers, the democratisation of business. 

Chaotic, unstructured, ad-hoc, classless, egalitarian. 

Even its inherent anonymity can be humanised: a few key strokes make a lopsided smile :>) 

See? 

E-zee.

There's no-one here to take your call right now... 

What can't go down the line? 

If you can dial-a-movie from your own sofa today, what'll you be able to access tomorrow? 

Education-on-demand? Dial-up libraries; interactive sessions with remote, electronic 'teachers'; access and download exactly the resources you need from multimedia central 'warehouses'? It's happening, now. 

Or dial-and-download IT? Why buy obsolescence when you can hire state of the art by the hour? A dumb terminal and a digital line - just download and use exactly the power and application you want, as and when and for just as long as you want it? It's coming, so they say. 


What about health-care? Few of us still have a granny on hand to say 'it's just a rash - be gone by morning'. Instant, remote, self-diagnosis could save heartache and fear, and let family doctors concentrate on work that really needs them. It's sure to come in some shape or form. 

If it can be digitalised, it can go; but what, where, to whom? And who decides?

"C'mon, Gran...just 'cos it's called a mouse, doesn't mean it bites" 


In cyberspace, no-one knows your name. 

Or your age, your colour, your appearance, your job, your income, or anything about your opinions or beliefs beyond what you choose to tell them. 

If you want to carry on with your education, who's business is it but yours? And if you develop a strange enthusiasm - say, Ancient Greek statuary or the fauna of the Arctic - you can share it with anyone, anywhere in the world, regardless of colour, race or creed (or age, for that matter). All you need is a computer, a modem, and a passion. 

Technology is breaking down barriers, blurring ancient divisions, opening up new avenues for discussion, turning traditional relationships upside down. Then again, if the young teach the old rather than the other way around, it's still about people helping people. 

Right, Gran?

I can remember when it was all green fields round here 

Towards the end of the last century, a rather excitable report on a recent invention suggested that "one day, there will be a telephone in every town." 

Prediction is a dangerous game, and yet.... 

Relationships will continue to be the most important things in our lives - technology will help us have more and better relationships with more people in more places. 

Most of us will continue to do pretty ordinary jobs in pretty ordinary locations - though we may well find that those jobs and locations change more often throughout our lives. 

Barriers - geographical, political, social - will become ever more diffuse, will lose definition, will overlap. 

Information technology will continue to get faster, smaller, cheaper...but we'll still use it for basically the same things: helping us feed, cloth and house ourselves, heal the sick and teach the children. 

And we at BT will carry on doing what we've always done: bringing people together. 

Some things never change. 

"Think of the capacity of fibre as if it were infinite. We literally do not know how many bits per second we can send down a fibre. Recent research results indicate that we are close to being able to deliver 1,000 billion bits per second. This means that a fibre the size of a human hair can deliver every issue ever made of the Wall Street Journal in less than one second." 

Nicholas Negroponte - Being Digital