Next week Dr Neil Barratt, a fellow of French mainframe computer manufacturer Bull, will be at corporate headquarters to liaise with research and development people there regarding his work on IT market trends through 2010. The idea, Barratt explained, is to guarantee that the report’s findings are carried across to help define Bull’s own R&D efforts and, even more, the types of R&D projects it will be funding at universities. Barratt’s report, created in association with research outfit Henley Center for Forecasting, set out two years ago to investigate the socio-economic changes that could be expected in British society, though much of what it has discovered is good for other countries’ markets too, particularly those in Europe. It found that, by the year 2010, not only will the UK’s workforce be older on average, but also work itself will have become much more flexible, with less people in full-time employment and more in part-time or freelance work, many of them working from home. Barratt was thus led to the conclusion that there will be a growing market for what he terms ‘digital familiars’, ie personalized guides, helps and advisors, with developments in artificial intelligence over the next few years making these figures more adaptive to their users. Ian Christie, deputy director of the social policy think-tank Demos, which checked Barratt’s conclusions before the report was released, said he sees the digital familiar developing first in the corporate segment, so that consumers going to a company’s web site could be ‘met’ by a virtual guide, explaining the products he or she was interested in, offering various forms of purchase (cash or credit card, etc) and even closing the deal.
