
Sign up to save your podcasts
Or


How easy is it to predict where tech will take us in the next decade, and have we hit a plateau in the pace of innovation?
Manuela Saragosa speaks to author and artist Douglas Coupland, who retells how a mind-bending run-in with a Google research team left him convinced that the next huge development hurtling towards us like a meteor is what he calls "talking with yourself".
Science fiction predictions of the future are notoriously wayward - where are the hoverboards and ubiquitous fax machines promised by the Back to the Future films? Nonetheless, forecasting tech developments can be 85% accurate over a 10-year time horizon, according to professional futurologist Dr I D Pearson.
But while tech may continue to take us to new and strange places in the long term, has Silicon Valley run out of earth-shattering new products, at least in the short term? The BBC's Zoe Kleinman reports from a rather subdued CES 2020 tech conference in Las Vegas.
Producer: Laurence Knight
(Picture: Cracked egg containing computer circuitry; Credit: sqback/Getty Images)
By BBC World Service4.4
488488 ratings
How easy is it to predict where tech will take us in the next decade, and have we hit a plateau in the pace of innovation?
Manuela Saragosa speaks to author and artist Douglas Coupland, who retells how a mind-bending run-in with a Google research team left him convinced that the next huge development hurtling towards us like a meteor is what he calls "talking with yourself".
Science fiction predictions of the future are notoriously wayward - where are the hoverboards and ubiquitous fax machines promised by the Back to the Future films? Nonetheless, forecasting tech developments can be 85% accurate over a 10-year time horizon, according to professional futurologist Dr I D Pearson.
But while tech may continue to take us to new and strange places in the long term, has Silicon Valley run out of earth-shattering new products, at least in the short term? The BBC's Zoe Kleinman reports from a rather subdued CES 2020 tech conference in Las Vegas.
Producer: Laurence Knight
(Picture: Cracked egg containing computer circuitry; Credit: sqback/Getty Images)

7,913 Listeners

4,225 Listeners

1,067 Listeners

296 Listeners

427 Listeners

5,576 Listeners

1,808 Listeners

2,113 Listeners

357 Listeners

427 Listeners

52 Listeners

227 Listeners

238 Listeners

346 Listeners

235 Listeners

684 Listeners

232 Listeners

326 Listeners

3,245 Listeners

73 Listeners

689 Listeners

528 Listeners

630 Listeners

394 Listeners

41 Listeners

239 Listeners

54 Listeners

146 Listeners

80 Listeners

96 Listeners