Future Living 2020 is a six part TV series that takes the viewers on a whirlwind tour of breakthrough science and technology from Formula 1 racing to nanotechnology and bird flu; from surgical brain implants to lasers that measure the body delivering perfect fit jeans and invited to think about its potential impact on us all, as we move towards the year 2020. Individual episodes deal with the future lifestyles, future computers, future of health, safety, sustainability and creativity.

The series urges us to put science at centre stage in our society of tomorrow, to ensure we reap the benefits that science and innovation can bring, and diminish the risks in an uncertain world over the next decade.

Lifestyle Futures

This programme shows us some of the science and technology based areas that we often engage with, in our lifestyle choices, and tells us why they are so challenging, as well as projecting how they might change our lives. The three segments in the programme explore:

Sustainable Futures

The sustainable world demands that we use resources in a balanced way, particularly in energy and transport. The impact on our climate is only now becoming obvious. This programme paints the way that travel, energy and climate may affect us and some of the choices we can make.

Healthy Futures

This programmes is introduced by Baroness Susan Greenfield, who leads the Oxford Institute for the Future of the Mind (OIFM), and is Director of the Royal Institution. She argues that science has to become central to all our lives, especially for young people, if we are to meet the challenges of the changing and growing world. In addition:

Digital Futures

We are all aware that computers have changed our world, sometimes in obvious and sometimes in almost hidden ways. The speed of development of new features and the speed of processing data just keeps accelerating, but can it go on forever? This programme helps us to understand :

			How really hard science and social problems that would have taken many years to solve can now be cracked using parallel computing. Dr Mark Parsons from the Edinburgh Parallel Computing Centre helps us realise how computers will continue to develop in the future, but how we might need to move into new ways of linking processing power together and what this might mean for mankind. Today we use parallel computing for a wide range of applications from weather impact forecasting to financial decision making and designing cars. Tomorrow, who knows what it will be used for?
			Dr. Glenn Collinson one of the founders of Cambridge Silicon Radio (CSR) takes us into a world where everything will become connected. CSR is one of the fastest growing companies in the world in mobile communications. Using CSR’s technology breakthroughs, most of the world’s phone and other portable device makers will enable their technology to talk to each other using Bluetooth and WiFi. The result will be the world that is always ‘plugged in’, even your car and house.
			Imran Khan, who leads the Glasgow company PICSEL, has developed a way of us being able to see any type of content, the way it was meant to look, from animated web pages, TV and news to Manga comics, all on our handheld devices of today and tomorrow. Content will be King, as they say!

Creative Futures

We tend to think of science and technology as being about better machines, but this programme shows how people can release their pent-up creativity using emerging technology that focuses on graphics, images, characters, sound and music. In the programme we hear from:

			Professor Stephen Heppell, Director of Heppell.net who is one of the world’s leading thinkers on the way we will access and share creativity and ideas in the future, through being plugged into a personalised programme of e-learning.
			George Auckland, Head of Innovation at the BBC’s Interactive Factual and Learning Group lays out the future of interactivity and how the media may be able to underpin a global infrastructure, for access to the best images and the most exciting programming content
			Ninja Theory is developing the lead game for the launch of the PlayStation3. Tameem Antoniades, the Chief of Design, forecasts a future where we have game worlds that are as rich visually as the cinema, and where we have a much stronger emotional interaction with the characters, as we do with film stars today. The UK is the design hub of the global games industry. Tameem tells us why.
			Peter Molyneux, the CEO of Lionhead Studios, is delivering another vision where we will all be enabled to use computing packages to develop our own feature film ideas and share them with others. Imagine you can cast your own stars, design the set and then Lights, Camera, Action - all under your control!
			Mind Candy is another company exploring the interface between the virtual and the real gaming worlds. Michael Smith, the CEO, talks about how he has helped thousands of game players around the world join in the game via the computer screen, and also how he has sometimes been able to bring them together to play face to face. What happens is fascinating!

Safer Futures

We live in a world which makes all of us anxious from time to time. This programme looks at how we can hope to develop barriers to global problems such as Avian Flu, SARS and AIDS, as well as how the forces that protect us, such as the police, can improve their control of criminals and enhance our personal security. In this programme we feature:

			A trio of innovators who are racing to develop a mask to protect us from Avian Flu using nano-technology to trap the tiny virus that may soon threaten us, and against which we have little protection. Its an exciting story led by Dr Guogang Ren and Prof. John Oxford from London University and Dr Paul Riep from Qinetiq NanoMaterials
			South of London, Professor Julian Ma, leads a ground breaking team who are seeking a successful barrier chemical to infection with AIDS, by growing pharmaceutical products in plants, at a scale and cost that will ultimately make them available to the developing world, license free. A humanitarian gesture for a global problem.
			BT meanwhile is putting together some technology at its showcase technology lab, Adastral Park, which will help identify abnormal situations in security conscious settings such as banks and airports, while also helping to identify people using clever biometrics
			Memex a Glasgow company established and led by David Carrick has developed a system for sifting through mountains of criminal data, collected by police and intelligence agencies, to see almost invisible connections between people and events. The system is used round the world by police and intelligence agencies and has already scored some major results.