Ian Pearson - The Future of Life on Earth

Ian Pearson, BT - The Future of Life on Earth

Life on earth is all still based on the same shared biological life processes. This will change dramatically over the next century, as humans discover how life works at the most basic levels, how to replicate and manipulate it, and how to create new life forms from scratch. New life is not necessarily restricted to conventional biology, even if it is inspired by it. It might be electronic, conventionally biological but of a new design, or based on new types of synthetic biology, or any combination of these. The scope for totally new life forms once cyberspace is added into the mix of electronics with synthetic and real biology will be enormous. For example, we could design and build a networked organism that physically spans the whole world, which exists partially in cyberspace and partially in the real physical world. How far can this all go, and what should we do about it?

Ian Pearson graduated in Maths and Physics from Queens University, Belfast. He currently works as BT's futurologist, studying the future of technology and its likely implications across the whole of industry, government and society.