TravelMole e-Wire Q&A with futurologist Ian Pearson

Author Ian Pearson worked for BT Laboratories as a futurologist until 2007, working in a broad range of emerging technologies. He set up his own company Futurison this year and now lectures on how technology will affect the way we live in the future.

Q: If any industry has benefited from technology, its travel. But are we getting it right?

A: Travel has really embraced emerging technologies but there is always room for improvement. There is an obsession right now with biometrics but it fails time and time again. Last year we were in Florida. For a two week attractions pass, Universal used our fingerprints as ID and over 14 days that we used it it worked only once. Biometrics are extremely unreliable and that’s dangerous in an airline environment because when they fail the next line of resistance is a human being and they are very easily to manipulate and persuade  that you are who you say you are. There’s an illusion of security about biometrics that is wrong. And it’s easy to cheat biometrics – a criminal can simply steal your ID in the same way they do now and then get biometric ID using your info and their own eyeball scan.

Another travel technology bugbear of mine is servers that time out after a minute or so if you don’t enter your details. Big operators do this in the name of security without ever thinking that the user may be pausing to consult family before booking. Ridiculous.

Q: Right now the industry is pedalling hard to catch up with the green bandwagon, with everything from carbon calculators to developing biofuel high on the agenda. Do you think it’s making an impact?

A: The government is putting out a message that we need to panic about the environment which I think is wrong. The biggest problem we are facing is the pioneering of biofuels. Why? Because competition for land is being pushed up as biofuels are grown on land where crops used to flourish. Idiot environmentalists who demand we grow more biofuels don’t think about the people who are starving because food prices have been pushed up. Thankfully, the EU has just announced it is abandoning its biofuels target. We need to take science and technology and use it to solve the problem of carbon emissions by looking at things like planes run of lithium polymer batteries – that’s  just around the corner. If they can use clean electricity to charge them, that’s the answer.

Q: Social networking and peer reviews have transformed the online travel landscape in the last few years. How do you see that developing?

A: There is absolutely no reason why users of these sites can’t club together and start using their sheer numbers to buy travel more cheaply. There’s nothing special about the likes of Expedia that they have buying power and you haven’t. Even ordinary large companies have buying power – any group of large people can leverage their position to get flights, accommodation for less. This will definitely happen in the future. I also see members cutting out agencies and middlemen so that if they were looking for a cottage in Cornwall, for example, they would just ask other members and owners would respond. These owners would then get paid the full amount of rental instead of handing it over to an intermediary who has effectively done not much.

Q: OK, we all love way out technology. What’s on the horizon that will really alter travel?

A: Well, pretty soon you will be able to walk around the Tower of London and watch King Henry VIIIth marrying Anne Boleyn there or witness any other major event as you walk around an area. This will be because you are wearing a video visor that is linked to a small device that is downloading internet content that tailors where you are and what you are interested in to what you view. I have wondered around monastery ruins that just have a few walls remaining and its really hard to get much out of it but if I could sit and watch the daily life of the monks and hear their chanting as I looked at where they lived, it would bring it alive. Wherever you are, you can tailor your experience of the place by accessing visual content that you are interested in. All this will be possible just a few years from now once the technology is really ready.

by Dinah Hatch