Jersey and Guernsey constantly talk about diversifying their economies, but what if they really took technology to the extreme? Liat Clarke looks at some areas of tech that are pretty much "out there" and asks whether the Channel Islands really could benefit from taking a walk on the wild side
Wearables
The wearables of the future will be all-encompassing health monitors, fashion statements and remote controls for every connected object in your world, of which there will be many. This doesn"t simply mean thermostats and smartphones - think door locks sensing your digital fingerprint, and refrigerators ordering the groceries. Smartphones and wearables will control every step.
The established chipmakers powering these devices may be hard to compete with, but there are many more avenues for opportunity. Not least of which are the legal and regulatory frameworks needed to enable the connected revolution - if you thought data protection laws were slow to grapple with Google"s behaviour tracking, wait until insurance companies get hold of your heart-rate data.
Because health will be a huge part of our connected world, Samsung and Apple have launched dedicated health app stores, and there"s ample space for fine-tuning the sensors picking up that data, the software analytics making it useful and the transfer and data-storage systems backing it all up. Cybersecurity will also be key - hack a future wearable, and you will be hacking an individual"s entire life.
Perhaps more important than any of these business opportunities is consumer testing, marketing and product design. To date there"s probably not a wearable on the market fashionable or useful enough to stay strapped to a person"s face or wrist all day, every day. Google Glass has met criticism for its looks and camera tech, already receiving bans from cinemas. Anyone that can nail a product design that"s beautiful and timeless, and delivers a USP that doesn"t rely on infringing the privacy of others, is in for a windfall.
Robotics
Japanese robot Kirobo was the first to have a conversation in space last year, and it signified the leaps being made in natural-language processing. Soon we will be able to tell our phones, and the devices they are connected to, exactly what we want them to do, and this stands to make our robotic underlings more helpful than ever before.
Elsewhere robots are already becoming our surgeons - 422,000 surgeries were conducted with them in the US in 2013 - and an ageing population means robot caregivers are in the making.
Robotics can be thought of in two categories - the machines we see, that will be doing the heavy lifting in factories, and the artificial intelligence (AI) behind them. The opportunities lie in developing the software that powers that AI. MIT roboticist Cynthia Breazeal has built the first family-friendly robot, "Jibo", and she has already called on developers to create accompanying apps.
Opportunities also exist in legislation. Atlas, the terrifying six-foot robot unveiled by Darpa in 2013, is designed for disaster response, but like the drones before it, will likely find its way into armies. Designing legislation for a future robot army is therefore a nearer task than you think. Not to mention the need for a legal framework that takes advanced AI into account.
Will we need a robot rights directive to prevent the abuse of these machines by those that control them? There are also no laws today that would apply to a murderous robot, because intent must be taken into account. Can a driverless car powered by a Siri-like future personal assistant be found guilty of a traffic crime if there"s no human in the vehicle?
On a brighter note, with the UK promising to get driverless cars out on public roads by 2015, the relatively small landmass of the Channel Islands could present the perfect test bed. “When you"re naturally confined by scale, then is that not a great opportunity to be leading the way? If the islands became a voracious user of high-tech - perhaps a test bed of sorts - then why would its own high-tech industry not follow on?” says Matthew Thornton, a Director at IT consultancy C5 Alliance.
Space race
From science to space tourism, the opportunities in the space sector are huge. The Isle of Man may already have a footing here - partly due to the government creating a dedicated Office of Space Commerce - and it seems to have its eyes squarely on the big prize: manned missions.
This is an already crowded sector, with SpaceX, Boeing, Space Adventures and the Isle of Man"s own Excalibur Almaz all planning orbital flights - and Virgin Galactic, XCOR and Armadillo Aerospace planning suborbital tourism. There are opportunities, however, in helping provide the legal and engineering backing these companies need to succeed - particularly if, as planned, the UK opens its first spaceport in 2018.
Most commercial spaceflight operators are also planning to provide companies with the means to launch small satellites weighing under 250kg. These cost-effective tools can be used to gather data for a variety of industries, including those delivering high-speed broadband to regions with poor connectivity (the Channel Island"s O3b is already on the case).
With the proliferation of miniature 10cm3 cubesats and the use of ever-advancing consumer-grade electronics in satellites, the opportunities for research are also expected to expand. Companies that want to build and design satellites will be in demand, as will those behind their software and the data-storage systems back on earth.
A rather large stumbling block, however, is expertise. Many space start-ups in the relatively successful UK market came from academic R&D hubs, so a university could massively improve the Channel Islands" space-race chances. “If the Channel Islands could attract the right variety of academics, it could start to grow a hub of technology experts,” says C5 Alliance"s Thornton.
3D simulations
We may not be able to see the future, but 3D simulations are trying their best to give us a number of optional ones to base decisions on.
Tech firm RDV Systems helps city planners, transportation companies and local government understand the environmental and economic impact of their designs by building a computer-generated view of the architecture and geology, dragging in publicly available data on traffic, population and more, and layering it with NASA photography.
“You can help different interest groups or the public imagine what something is going to look like,” says CEO Eial Diskin. “It enables you, in a simple manner, to see what things will look like in the future.” The company licenses the technology out, so anyone can make use of it, or they"ll build it for you. It means bringing an entirely new dimension to your business - whatever that might be.
For instance, cloud-based simulation software Simudyne has been developed to not only help city planners, but emergency responders and healthcare providers, in one study replicating an entire country of three million people.
Combined with big-data analytics, they proved in one case that a city park was entirely misplaced - built in an area with high crime rates and poor transport links, it was not widely used by runners. This might sound unimportant, but a well-placed park that encourages the public to exercise is part of what will drive down healthcare costs. With a rapidly ageing population, this will be a key area moving forward.
Reality check
As incredible as it would be for the Channel Islands to bag a piece of the high-tech action, C5 Alliance"s Thornton presents a very forthright sense check.
“For anything like this to happen, it would initially need a mix of financial backing and a commitment to training (and retaining) the right skills on island,” he explains. “Will this ever happen? I doubt it - on Guernsey, we can"t even build a decent cinema.
“There are two clear barriers to entry in these sectors - expertise and start-up costs. Clustering of high-tech industry is a well-known phenomenon - so it would take something initially to kick-start any such industry in the Channel Islands, as nothing like it really exists.”
Of course, this doesn"t mean it"s impossible. “Modern computing and advances in technology have greatly decreased the importance of geographic location and reduced some of the previous barriers to entry into certain markets,” says Thornton. “And I for one would welcome a high-tech Guernsey, awash with miles of fibre optics and self-driving solar-panelled cars… and of course my own robotic servant.”
As they say, be careful what you wish for…