The World in 2030

The World in 2030 73
You will know what the wired world is like and you
will begin to understand the implications! You become
a pioneer of the information age, experiencing
with awe the power of linked computers which the
next generation will take for granted. 140
And by 2030 the experience of using this ‘super combined
web’ will also be far more rich and multi-sensory than it is
today, but it will be totally invisible and wholly pervasive.
‘Internet access’, in the absence of future language, will be
provided by lamp posts, windows, in trains, on planes, by
buildings and by church steeples. It will be ‘the internet
of the air’ in which we, our children, our pets and trillions
of inanimate objects (and some very intelligent machines)
commune every second of the day.
The high speed super-web of 2030 will deliver 3D
holographic images of sports events, dramas, games and sex
simulations. The super-web will be able to provide tactile
simulations, odours and tastes. The multi-sensory super-web
will create virtual experiences that will seem so real they
are almost indistinguishable from the real thing (and as we
sense the ‘real thing’ solely though our own human sensory
apparatus, who is to argue which is the more real?).
In time, perhaps before 2030, our minds will be directly
attached to the super-web by a neural interface and, with a
thought, we will be able to access the world’s entire stock of
information, communication, learning, entertainment and
leisure activities in full sensory glory. It sounds like science
fiction, but by 2030 some people will be enjoying such
astonishing access.