Future imperfect: TV in 2020

Predicting the future isn’t easy. It’s hard to think of a single long-term prediction that has turned out to be right, although that may have more to do with schadenfreude than the hopelessness of futurologists. It’s just a lot more fun to remember the wayward forecasts, the ones which suggested that one day every city would have at least one telephone or that by 1995 we would all be clad in baking foil and living on the moon.

In a report on television in 2020 produced by industry experts commissioned by the cable TV company ntl Telewest, the predictions seem to fall into two camps: safe predictions that are dull but probably will happen, and off-the-wall ideas that are interesting but probably won’t

The first category includes developments already in progress: all programmes will be available on demand; screens will broadcast different pictures to two viewers simultaneously; CDs and DVDs will be replaced by digital files. These predictions are dull not because the products aren’t interesting – they are, and video on demand really will make a difference to how we watch programmes and how they’re made – but because they’re already beginning to happen. The trick of a good prediction is making it before the event

The second category includes such pure science-fiction ideas as television that transmits an emotional response direct to the viewer's brain. Details are hazy, but the theory seems to be that viewers watching, for example, a horror film would have their experience enhanced by a signal stimulating the brain’s fear response.

Falling between these two extremes are such old chestnuts as video walls and holographic TV, both of which have been foreseen for so long now that they sound more old fashioned than futuristic.

The underlying problem is that 2020 is only 14 years away. Fourteen years ago it was 1992, and since then changes to TV have been modest. Digital TV has brought some non-Sky users into the multi-channel era and flat screens mean that the sets take up less room, but beyond that little has changed.

That could mean that TV is next in line for a revolution (and the internet has shown how much can change in 14 years), but it could just be that most people are pretty happy with the product that they have.

Comments

[Ivan I Dearlove]

Surprisingly, I had a slightly similar but more sophisticated idea (than TV directly into one’s brain) in the 1970s. I anticipated that by the year 2020 it would be possible to transmit thoughts directly between brains (using the internet and computer technology), thus creating the potential for telepathy. 2020 seemed both an appropriate and achievable date for this idea to come to fruition.

[Steven]

The prospect of this could lead to re-modelling memory. As associating certain emotions with adverts would change our conception of our surroundings via associative memory. Leading to new ways of controlling society and altering "free-will".

[Naomi]

Would allowing the transmission of specific emotional stimulations not take subconcious manipulation to an undesirably high level? I don't fully understand the science of this idea, of course, but it seems that it could leave us invountarily vulnerable to political brain-washing or other big-brotheresque methods of social engineering. I agree that it seems to threaten our free-will. It sounds fascinating, though, so I'd love to hear that this could not be the case!

[Damien]

TV over the internet will, with increasing bandwidth, bring on a revolution like that which the internet has undergone.

[matthew robertson]

TV and the internet will merge. As one of the previous comments suggested, as bandwith increases so will the ability to make available programming and associated services. The screen on your wall will no longer be a TV but how you access and interact with the world at large on a daily basis.

The main problem of the future will be whether people can afford the programming, the technology to display it and the ability to interact with the internet and services an indvidual will have to access on a daily basis.

[Dave Garner]

In the next 14 years human consciousness will be transformed so that we make contact with the collective consciousness. This will end the constant barrage of thoughts in the human attention and enable the inner being to be liberated.

TV will be an artform.

[Webmaster Central]

The convergence of television, telecommunications and computer technologies will continue to erode scheduled broadcast TV viewing figures, as more people turn to on-demand streaming and downloading. Memory sticks (DVS - Digital Video Sticks) will replace DVDs for purchasing pre-recorded video. Future TV sets will have USB ports and be broadband-enabled, downloading and storing video on portable and internal solid-state memory. Online advertising spending will probably climb closer to broadcast media marketing, as more viewers fast-forward or hack-out any ads in free-to-view video content. Avatar creation and virtual interaction will increase even more rapidly when it's available via screens in most homes. Broadcasting may eventually be phased out as the majority of people have their screens hooked up to ultra-high-speed telecommunications instead of plugged in to an aerial.