Learn all about the major trends and future advancements in ICT!

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 betweenpeople 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 ICTinfrastructure - 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 affectingindustries 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.

Paul Warren works within the IT Futures Centre at BT. He is currently Project Director of ACTIVE (http://www.active-project.eu), a European project in the area of collaborative knowledge management. recent previous roles have been in the areas of service-oriented infrastructure and semantic technologies - both at the forefront of developments in ICT. At an earlier stage in his career, Paul worked on technology strategy and technology foresight,investigating areas as diverse as eBusiness and novel forms of computing. Paul has published widely on knowledge management, semantic technologies and technology foresight. Paul holds a degree in Theoretical Physics from Cambridge University and a MSc in Electronics from Southampton University. Paul can be contacted atpaul.w.warren@bt.com.

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 atjohn.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 atdave.g.brown@bt.com

Editor Biographies.

List of Contributors.

Foreword.

Introduction.

Part One: People and Technology.

1. Predicting the Socio-technical Future (and Other Myths) (Ben Anderson and Paul Stoneman).

2. Social Networks, Social Computing and Knowledge Management (Nicholas J. Kings, John Davies, David Verrill, Sinan Aral, Erik Brynjolfsson and Marshall van Alstyne).

3. Device Futures (Jonathan Mitchener).

4. Online Trust and Customer Power: The Emergence of Customer Advocacy (Glen L. Urban).

Part Two: Building the Infrastructure.

5. The Semantic Web - From Vision to Reality (Paul Warren and John Davies).

6. Flexible ICT Infrastructure (Mike Fisher and Paul McKee).

7. Achieving Security in Enterprise IT (Theo Dimitrakos and Ivan Djordjevic).

8. The Future All Optical Network - Why We Need It and How We Get There (David Payne).

9. End-to-End Service Level Agreements for Complex ICT Solutions (John Wittgreffe, Mark Dames, Jon Clark and James McDonald).

10. Mobility and ICT (Richard Dennis and Dave Wisely).

11. Pervasive Computing (David Heatley, George Bilchev and Richard Tateson).

12. Artificial Intelligence Comes of Age (Simon Thompson).

Part Three: Applying Technology.

13. Healthcare (Chris Wroe, Paul Garner and Janette Bennett).

14. Supply Chain Management in the Retail Sector (Edgar E. Blanco and Chris Caplice).

15. Technology Innovation in Global Financial Markets (Lesley Gavin)

16. Technology and Law: The Not So Odd Couple (Marta Poblet, Pompeu Casanovas and Richard Benjamins).

Part Four: Final Words.

17. Over the Horizon (Ian Pearson).

18. Conclusions (Paul Warren, John Davies and David Brown).

Index.