IT'S THE NEXT BIG THING

I've seen the future and it's scary.

We've just witnessed the start of the technological revolution. It began about thirty years ago with the advent of home computers and shortly afterwards came the mobile phones which soon incorporated computers and thereby became essential to our daily needs.

Look how fast it's taken off. Twitter, iPads, Androids, Skype, Facebook - all words which were unknown just a few years ago.

We didn't see it coming. When I first pressed the wobbly rubber keys on my ZX Spectrum back in 1981, I had no idea it would be the first step on a path which would allow me to tweet in real time with somebody in war-torn Afghanistan about how things were going for them.

When I first put the mobile brick to my ear to call somebody, little did I know that it would lead to a Skype conference allowing me to sit in my Gloucester home to see and hear a friend's new born baby in Belgium.

So what is the next big thing? Robots.

The techno-geeks are working round the clock to produce lifelike robots which will look and act like humans. They will be servants in our homes performing the menial tasks and thereby allowing us to spend more time on things we choose to do rather than things we have to do.

It doesn't take a huge leap of imagination to foresee a time when disease, warfare or climate change wipes out mankind leaving the robots largely untouched. The Earth will then belong to the insect world who will no doubt find it curious to be allowed to crawl over the hard-working household robots' faces without being swatted.

Frightening.