We have more PCs per head than Japan; but we’re behind America in internet use. Naturally, children are leading the way – “the kids are go!” as Peter says.Peter’s own children are so go, they’re almost gone. He has two grown- up daughters – a pharmacologist and a student of psychology – and two young sons, who are the real prodigies. Only then, according to Cochrane, would the Information Superhighway really have arrived.The famous quid pro quo for this relaxation of regulation (which BT never refers to as a “deal”) is BT’s promise to connect every public institution in the country – most importantly, schools – to the internet.Cochrane claims that children interacting with a computer terminal learn “50 per cent faster and absorb 80 per cent more” than when reading books.
This would facilitate easy installation of a host of services (two-way television, video on demand, pure data services, and so on) into every home. BT could then have the incentive dramatically to upgrade its network, replacing the remaining outmoded copper transmission cables with fibre optic cables. It seems to be a free-for-all, with the participants airing BT anxieties of the moment. These include the general chaos – otherwise known as free market competition – in the British telecommunications scene, and BT’s frustration at being substantially excluded by anti-monopoly regulations from the cable TV revolution If Tony Blair came to power, this might change. He once went on a train with a screen clipped to his glasses and covering one eye “People didn’t like that,” he says. “They got up and walked away.” A wristwatch- type unit is the likeliest, and Professor Cochrane believes it could be in everyday use within 20 years.Back in his office, Cochrane nibbles a sandwich (lunch) while conducting a meeting. “Maybe you could just get away with a bit of memory in the boxes of the future,” says Peter.
The boxes would be dependent upon mainframe computers back at base for their brain power – a reversion to the situation in the pioneering days of computers.Cochrane has experimented with many portable formats. “The basic problem,” he says, “is to have a box you can use anywhere, any time, at low cost, that can communicate with any other box.” Naturally, the user would be able to talk to this box, and it would talk back. Versatility and portability are the objectives, along with ease of use: a “granny-friendly interface”.At the moment, even the lightest laptops are too heavy, and their batteries run out quickly. In a sense, our terminals are now too intelligent, hence their bulk.
“It’s all about humanising the machines,” says Peter, “getting to the stage where you can be comfortable with them.”At the core of Professor Cochrane’s researches are “a whole bunch of hardware issues”. Do you know the basic difference between a laptop and a newspaper? No one reads a laptop on the toilet.” He thinks that books will be with us for a long time yet.We enter an office in which two young men are working with talking PCs. As we sit down, a computer informs somebody that “you have a meeting in five minutes”. It uses the same prototype voice synthesiser that I’d heard in the professor’s car. “Paper’s a good medium,” he says, rallying quickly, “it’s user-friendly.
