Data accessibility is key to the future

We will vote electronically in most elections, receive medical consultation remotely over the internet, and work from home most of the time - and there'll be more online users in Europe than the US.

These are the predictions of delegates at the seventh annual Wall Street Journal Europe/Dow Jones CEO Summit, held in London last week.

Delegates were questioned on how they thought technology would change society by 2010. They predicted that they will have a single telephone number for all services, and that most homes will access broadband services via digital subscriber line phone systems. They also predict houses wired for central control of all appliances, wireless Lans becoming the standard, the majority of voice calls using internet protocol, and voice recognition and translation software being 100 per cent accurate.

Convergence allowing access and transmission of data at any time and by any device was voted the technology most likely to change society.

Respondents envisaged it bringing IT, business, government and the public closer together.

"Internet users' attention span is as low as six to eight seconds. Companies will need to enable their customers to access information from mobile devices as quickly as users require," said Darroll Nuytenhuys, European president of BMC Software. "Delivering services that will enable the completion of a transaction in shorter time has some of the biggest implications."

First published in Computing