This article was taken from the June 2013 issue of Wired magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by <span class="s1">subscribing online.
Wired asks a selection of academics and business types for their thoughts on this month's big question: "How will we communicate with others across the world in 20 years' time?"
Niklas Zennström
Founder, Skype "Perfect, instantaneous, cross-language, long-distance communication - speak English to someone in Japan and they instantly hear in well-spoken Japanese.
The sound and video will be crystal clear, with no background noise. Technology will enhance fidelity, not reduce it."
Adrian M Owen
Neuroscientist, Western Uni "An obvious answer is to say that we'll all be communicating by thought alone, but I don't think that's very likely. It will take more than 20 years to overcome all of the scientific and logistic challenges required to prepare this technology for everyday use, but we'll be a lot closer."
Mel Slater
Professor, UCL; Catalan Institute of Research "We are currently one person communicating, often simultaneously, with many others -- phone, email, Twitter etc... We may change to a many-many situation, where multiple representations of our self deals with multiple representations of multiple others."
Laura Rajchman Ambassador, Babelverse "The question is, which language will we be speaking in 20 years' time? Esperanto? Mandarin? We envisage a world where language barriers are no more.
Universal-translator software will allow real-time interpretation that preserves the quality, context and emotion of communication."
Melissa Chow
Co-founder, mk+h "As new technologies push towards these tangible user interfaces, haptic communication will become embedded in our cities, homes, clothes and even our bodies. In 20 years' time, it will be second nature -- as normal as our phone's vibrations telling us we've received a message."
Luigina Ciolfi
Senior researcher, Sheffield Hallam University "Interpersonal communication and social connections will be part of the spaces and objects we live with: they will link to information for others. Our seat on the bus will tell our friends that we are on our way, and the cup we are holding will ask our phone to invite colleagues to join us in the café."
Gerwin Schalk
Research scientist, New York Department of Health. "In 20 years' time you will be able to think certain commands and they will be translated. Currently the whole communication process, whether human-to-human or human-to-computer, is very slow. That's why we want to eliminate the need to use muscles to talk or type."
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
