In Money Never Sleeps, the sequel to the movie Wall Street, we’re treated to a trip down memory lane when the character Gordon Gekko retrieves his personal belongings as he leaves prison.
He’s handed his 1980s era mobile phone, which is a brick, in every sense of the word. Who would have thought then that mobile phones would become so ubiquitous and small – without breaking the bank.
What would you have thought? Or what would your technological predictions for the future be, if you were asked now in 2010? One company decided to poll the public’s expectations for technology over the next decade.
Cisco recently released the results of its Digital Expectations Survey, which in a large number of cases, show how the public’s expectations lag considerably behind reality.
500 members of the Irish public guessed at when they thought a range of technology services would be available. Some of these services are already in use, and others are close to availability.
74% say that by 2012 we will start paying for parking meters on our mobile phones (this is already possible at some locations in Ireland).
Good news for RTE Player is that 71% expect to start to watch more TV using the internet than standard television reception methods in two years time. However, more than half of those surveyed (56%) reckon we are another five years away from having a 100 Mbps internet connection available to households.
52%, apparently oblivious to the e-voting debacle of recent years believe that we will be able to vote online in elections by 2015. Some common sense was abound the 66% said that it would never be possible to hold a seat on a local council simply by joining the Facebook group.
60% predict that most work meetings will be conducted by video conference rather than in person by the end of this year.
Four out of 5 people predict it will be possible to talk to people in space with the same call quality as a call to mum down the road by 2020.
Just little over half of the survey respondents that it would be possible to have a fridge that orders your shopping for you automatically as you run low on your favourite foods – by 2018.
As farfetched or not so farfetched as some of these may seem, the fact of the matter, according to Kim Majerus, managing director of Cisco Ireland, is tech-savvy consumers have wrenched control away from the organisational IT departments and are now shaping the future development of technology in Irish society.