In this chapter, Neil Frude attempts to assess the future of information technology and of the demand for it by domestic consumers, including no doubt the avant-garde who purchased talking teddy bears for their children last Christmas.

He begins by classifying users of information technology (IT) into two groups. First, there are those who welcome an involvement with IT. These include experts, who benefit directly from their involvement through intellectual, professional, and financial gains; workers, whose jobs involve the use of word processors, robots, or accounting systems; and hobbyists, who gain their thrills from developing systems via IT whether or not there is any gain in efficiency at the end. “Most people,” who may not understand the technology and who see it as offering few benefits beyond temporary satisfactions such as playing games, make up the second group.

Frude notes that “at this point the costs for the ordinary user outweigh the benefits.” He then develops his ideas as to how these conclusions may change in the not-so-distant future because of the progress being made in research and development. His futurist gaze encompasses technical, functional, and product changes, and he predicts in some detail how the commercial potential will accelerate changes in computers, robots, and the like. These, together with growing demand by consumers, should cause progress to be made in several areas, such as intelligent systems. Not only will a robot wash dishes, it will also put the crockery and cutlery away. Not only will the robot animal repeat tape recorded words, but, when the technical problems of speech synthesis have been solved, it will be able to say anything.

The author investigates the psychological and social effects of IT, taken together with the rapidly changing social scene. Thus, he comments

Systems with ‘artificial personality’ could be expected to exert a powerful influence on their users. There is a basic psychological tendency to treat certain kinds of objects anthropomorphically . . . it is clear that many of the ways in which artificial systems will in future be enhanced will render them highly susceptible to such a response.

The author sees the future in terms of product and of serving the consumer market. IT will speed up the life cycle of many products by shortening the development process and will make it simpler and cheaper to incorporate enhanced features into many products. Whether, as Frude suggests, customers will be delighted with real toy animals and thinking domestic robots will no doubt shortly become apparent. However, the ideas of futurists often are adopted. W. H. Preece, in a lecture delivered to young persons in London one hundred years ago, said,

There is a friend of mine, Sir Francis Truscott, who has his house fitted with electricity. He used to employ two men every day in raising water from a depth of 150 feet to fill his tanks, but when he had secured the use of electricity for lighting the house, I suggested to him that he might just as well use it for raising his water. It was no sooner suggested than acted upon. [1]

We still depend on electricity; IT certainly does.