Gus Desbarats opinion/Telegraph technology futures supplement/Nov 2010/Sue Tabbitt

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If Gus Desbarats has his way, the UK will lead the next wave of IT innovation - which will be music to David Cameron ears given his recent promise of a revival in British entrepreneurism. But forget Facebook and the Kindle - the future demands an altogether more natural consumer experience, he says

Despite the budget cuts, Gus Desbarats is confident of his continued role as the Government's 'innovation guru', thanks to the Prime Minister's commitment to a new era of British design and manufacturing.
"The current Government is very clear about the importance of innovation, to the point that people in the IT industry are quite energised," he says. "There is a tonne of wonderful expertise in this country, both in technology and in the creative industry. If we can bring the two together more, we could be building world-class brands of our own, instead of selling clever ideas to the Americans."
The nub of Desbarats' strategy is to promote greater collaboration between creative talent and the technologists, so that products actually change people's lives. Apple's unparalleled success in wowing consumers to date, he says, is down to the fact that the company has always understood the importance of the user experience. "It's not all about technology. Users will decide what works and what doesn't."
Desbarats envisages a future where everything is more natural and seamless, describing a scenario where the 50" 3D screen in his living room will provide a 'magical movie selection kingdom' - access to any conceivable film, alongside reviews and recommendations from friends. "I'll be able to plan my viewing for the week, and set aside something to watch on the train so that it's already downloaded onto my tablet-like device by the morning. If I go out in the evening, I'll switch to my smallest phone, which knows I have dinner reservations at 8pm and presents directions and a map. On arrival, my reservation will pop up and the waitress will know it's me."
While much of this is technically possible today, everything is still a bit clunky. Broadband lacks continuity across the locations and devices we move between, and the technology, content and applications behind the scenes need to be more 'joined up'.
"When we create artificial stuff, it's always quite crude initially," Desbarats notes. "Quality takes time." The building blocks are there; now it's time for the industry to come together and add the finesse. In the meantime, those who decide to wait it out - shunning videophones and so on - are forgiven.
Similarly, Desbarats has great sympathy with the millions of consumers who have resisted joining existing social networks because they feel phoney and vulgar. "If you feel Facebook is a second-class way of doing things, stick to your guns," he urges. "The industry needs to see this reaction.

"But just because something has been done badly and too soon doesn't mean it's been a failure," he warns. "Technology has a tendency to overshoot, and yes, there will probably come a day when we look back and groan at the notion of 'Facebook friends' and weird social set-ups that involved pushing buttons, but it would be wrong to dismiss the value of being better connected to people."
Progress is all in the detail. In the case of the iPod, the transformational moment was the addition of CoverFlow, allowing users to flick through their now sizeable digital music collections in a visual way.
Likewise, it's only a matter of time before storing precious digital photos on a single, risk-ridden hard drive at home becomes unthinkable, just as no one keeps money under the mattress any more. "People will relax about storing important content remotely - where it's backed up and accessible from anywhere." Ultimately, this is likely to be in their own personal 'cloud' - a dedicated, customised space on a resilient, remote server which combines their photos, music, contacts and documents with third-party resources they access frequently.
Finally, even if a dedicated Kindle device isn't the definitive answer, the way people read will change forever as electronic reader solutions become more natural. "Will we see the end of newspapers? The paper bit, probably, but the daily distribution of pre-packaged content - that will continue. The difference will be that consumers will get to dictate what goes where, so they don't have to thumb forward to page 52 for the bit they care about. As for being able to read in the bath, that's an easily solvable problem. Making a waterproof tablet is easy."
" Gus Desbarats is the recently-appointed Chairman of British Design Innovation (BDI), and 'innovation guru' for the government's Technology Strategy Board. He is also chairman of design consultancy TheAlloy, responsible for the world's first squeezable mobile phone

Interviewed by Sue Tabbitt