It is notoriously difficult to predict the technologies of the future: who can forget Tomorrow’s World presenter Raymond Baxter confidently espousing the merits of paper underwear, or ‘Whispering’ Ted Lowe being forced to improvise by an uncooperative snooker-playing robot on the same programme?
These outlandish glimpses into our imagined future may have turned out to be some way off the mark, but they illustrate the importance of producing sufficient ideas that there are guaranteed to be some good ones among them. And that means a sufficient number of creative individuals to support a critical mass of activity, from generating the ideas to ensuring that the best concepts are recognised and developed into new technologies.
