ICT Futures

ICT Futures provides an insightful introduction to the major technology trends in Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), and to the economic, commercial and societal environment which is shaping them. 

The experienced author-team, consisting of experts from both industry and academia, addresses:

• The interaction between people and technology - how ICT affects every day social practices; the rise of social computing; how the way we interact with information and the devices we use are changing; and how trust can be assured over the Internet.
• The underlying ICT infrastructure - the semantic web and the semantic intranet; the real-time service-oriented infrastructure; the future optical network; self-managing networks and agents; P2P technologies; pervasiveness; mobility and wireless technology; and how all this infrastructure can be made secure.
• ICT technology and how it is affecting industries as diverse as health, finance, retail and law. 

The book covers a vast wealth of material, with a strong focus upon the impending changes to the way ICT operates.This reference is a valuable tool for people in managerial roles, CIOs, CTOs, business and technology strategists, and students undertaking technology MBAs, or technology modules in general MBAs. Professionals working in ICT will also find this book valuable. 

Dr John Davies Leads the Next Generation Web research group within the IT Futures Centre at BT. Current interests centre around the application of semantic web and Web 2.0 technology to knowledge management, business intelligence, information integration and service-oriented environments. John is chairman of the European many papers and books in the area of semantic technology and its business applications, web-based information management and knowledge management; and has served on the program committee of numerous conferences in these areas. He is a Fellow of the British Computer Society and a Chartered Engineer. Earlier research at BT let to the development of a set of knowledge management tools which are the subject of a number of patents. These tools ere spun out of Bt and are now marketed by Infonic Ltd, of which John is Group Technical Advisor.John received the BT Technology Award for Technology Entrepreneurship for his contribution to the Creation of Infonic. John can be contacted at john.nj.davies@bt.com.

David Brown is Head of the Foresight team in BT Research and Venturing where his key role is to help BT and its customers manage the future. His role is particularly important to the development of BT, and along with the contribution so his other team members, he is successfully predicting fast-paced changes in technology. This ensures that BT invests widely and continues to offer the right services needed by customers, both for today and tomorrow. David has written many articles on technology strategy and economics. Previous reasonability within his time at BT includes leading teams in the network strategy, product management and applications development fields. Before joining BT, David worked for ICL as a systems engineer. David gained a BSc in Mathematics from Durham University and h olds a Sloan Fellowship MSc in Economics from the London Business School. David can be contacted at dave.g.brown@bt.com