Ian D. Pearson
Ian D.
Pearson, BSc, DSc(hc), CITP, MBCS, FWAAS has spent
over 25 years looking at far
future technologies, from missile design to advanced computer systems. He
has worked in most fields of engineering over that time.
He is
currently the in-house futurologist
for Futurizon, and is
researching ultra-simple computing and bionics, considering ways of
placing electronics into our skin and linking our bodies to the future
all-pervasive information technology environment. He has been studying
issues of evolutionary software and hardware development and
self-organization since 1989 and now believes these will bring us the
technology of smart bacteria, probably within two decades.
Ian lectures extensively on the impacts of information technology on
business and society. He has made well over 400 TV and radio
appearances, with hundreds of press articles. He has won numerous awards
for his published papers. He authored the innovative e-doc available
from Amazon, The
Next 20 Years in Technology: Timeline and Commentary.
He
also authored The Macmillian Atlas of the Future,
Where’s It Going? (Prospects for Tomorrow),
Business 2010: Mapping the New Commercial
Landscape which includes a foreword by Arthur C.
Clarke,
Carbon:
Achieving CO2 reductions in the UK by using technology
instead of
muddled thinking, and
A 25 page guide to the future:
Just occasionally, everyone else is wrong.
Ian coauthored
EDNA – Enhanced DNA: Giving us full external control of our inner biology along
with Tracey Follows.
An EDNA system would put advanced biotechnology and IT into every cell of our bodies and enable
interfacing to almost every aspect of our current biology, and also provide a means to edit, replace,
enhance, mediate and control almost every aspect of it.
Much of the EDNA System is feasible in the
next few decades, but as well as enormous potential benefits, it would also bring enormous dangers.
We explore both.
Ian is consultant editor of The
Communications Network
Journal, and of
Foresight. He is a founding member of the
Association of Professional Futurists,
and a Chartered
Fellow of the British Computer Society, the World Academy of Art and
Science, the Royal Society of Arts, the Institute of Nanotechnology and
the World Innovation Foundation. He was recently awarded an Honorary
Doctor of Science degree by the University of Westminster.
Read his blog and his about.me profile.
Follow him on Twitter
and
LinkedIn.
