Changing Technologies

Network delivery speeds to the home have increased 10 fold over the past 10 years. Home storage capabilities have increased 1000 fold over the same time period. Mobile phones have become the true converged ubiquitous computing platforms, with gigabytes of storage, 3D visual capabilities, and video/audio recording and playback.

> media consumption devices

Computers have shrunk to laptops, intelligent displays, pen and touch screens. Home entertainment platforms have gone from multichannel TV with simple computer games to near interactive 3D movies, gesture based input, surround sound audio and entire collections of video fitting inside ring binder sized wallets.

There is currently reason to believe that these trends will continue over the next 10 years. Home network delivery speeds will continue to rise relatively slowly, but at least 10 fold. Storage may continue to grow at a rate of1000 fold per decade. Incredible as this seems today, this means that even a laptop may be capable of storing dozens of terabytes.

Devices will continue to become more personal, and current esoteric platforms, such as paper with e-ink may become more common. Connectivity to and from these devices will become faster, more convenient and movement of data between devices will be an expectation, not a privilege. If content providers do not enable this, the people will enable it for themselves, sharing their results.

3D interactive capabilities of "games" consoles will become film quality, leading to an escalation of format wars leading beyond 2D gesture capabilities to full 3D resolution and scene recognition. Camera integration is leading to video phone style systems becoming common place, very soon. Speech recognition will become common place. Audio/Video search will take on a brute force approach, supplementing and often replacing metadata approaches of the past.

It is into this environment the BBC will be delivering its content.