Prompt's TechBlog

The DTI is running what it describes as 'a national series of conversations about new technologies, the future and society'. The Science Horizons project is basically a big focus group. The DTI has written some scenarios portraying life in the year 2025, and you (yes, you) are invited to chat about them with your friends and send in your comments.

There's stuff in there about using computers for self-diagnosis when you're ill, and about special jogging hats that can help people with Alzheimer's Disease to find their way without getting lost. There's worry about whether someone you meet in the real world can be trusted as much as someone who matches your dating wishlist online and whether a robot can care for you in your old age. There's a man called Henry who apparently works from a cafe using something called a 'web portal', which sounds awfully futuristic.

But despite the nice pastel colours, there's a bleak undercurrent to these scenarios. It's taken as read that teachers are still poorly paid, and you have to queue for hours to see a doctor. There's an environmental catastrophe every month and everyone's freedom is curtailed by needing to trade carbon credits. There's a lady in her seventies who's running her own business (bravo!) because she lost her pension in the 2010 pensions collapse (blast!). There's another lady who's baffled by having to choose the source for her energy - wind, biomass, nuclear or solar. How could we let the energy market become so deregulated and fractured that this is a consumer decision?

Perhaps the goal of the exercise is to roadtest or secure buy-in for unpopular policies, including personal carbon credits and water rationing. Most solutions to the problems in the scenarios imply higher taxes, which most parties would rather test in focus groups than in elections. The website claims it will submit all responses to the government in autumn 2007 and publish all the comments online. It could prove to be an interesting snapshot of the country and our commitment to tackling the big issues including climate change, population growth, and energy. It would be a mistake to assume that scientists will solve all these problems for us: the only way to be sure of a solution is to start making changes in how we use limited resources now.

Footnote: I'd like to think that by 2025, governments will take website accessibility more seriously. At the time of writing, the meat of this website appears to be available in Flash and PDF only. The accessibility page is unfinished and under the 'compatibility' heading says 'Compatible with different browsers... Use of valid XHTML and valid CSS... Compliant with WCAG and Section 508...'. For the ellipsis, we might as well read 'blah blah blah'.