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The timeline claims to cover every area of modern life influenced by technology. Among the subjects covered are Artificial Intelligence; Health and Medical; Business and Education; Demographics; Energy; Robotics; Space; Telecommunications; Transport and Travel.

Some of the predictions are fairly harmless including such things as entertaining children with video panels on the wall by 2012. In the near term, many of the predictions are already in view such as TV jewellery, video tattoos and 100Gb memory sticks. BT also foresees smart skin for repairing burns and other damage, tooth regeneration and automatic steering for cars.

Further

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out, things start to get uncomfortable. BT puts a date of 2029 for the much anticipated 'singularity point' when computers become more intelligent than humans. The scary thing being that if Moore's Law still holds by then, they will be twice as intelligent by 2031. In fact the global machine dictator should appear by 2050. However, given that we should have invented time travel and had unambiguous contact with extraterrestrial life by then, we may be able to evade Microsoft's total rule.

It also predicts that electronic life will be given basic rights by 2016 although presumably those rights will not be much use for domestic electronic pets that are due to be wiped out by a virus in 2025.

It also predicts that by 2051 a team of robots will beat England at football although on recent showings the date is likely to be much closer than BT imagines.

Of course, we can all hope that much of this is unlikely to come to pass. However, BT says that the first Technology Timeline, published in the early 1990s, had an accuracy rate of between 80-90 per cent.

The contents of BT's crystal ball can be found at the BT Technology Timeline page.