Bendy screens and hoverbikes: the tech of 2019

Now we’re getting to the end of 2018, let’s look forward to what awaits us in the bright new year in the world of tech. Georgia Mills spoke to Peter Cowley, techspert and angel investor...

Peter - Well first of all the Consumer Electronics Show which is beginning of January is where the launches occur for 2019. It’s huge, been going about 50 years, 200,000 people turn up. The launches aren't yet public. They sort of come out the weekend beforehand but the ones there seem to be rumours about, there are four of them. One is a transparent TV. That means you can see the wallpaper through the TV perhaps, not quite sure why that is.

Georgia - Why would you want your TV to be transparent?

Peter -  No clue. This is only a rumor. Secondly a foldable phone. Now of course that'll presumably be a screen with two sides but if you go back probably even before you were born there was foldable phone in the 80s from Motorola in 1989. Voice control of more devices this will be more useful. The fact I hardly ever use a TV in the lounge means I have no clue what the buttons do on the remote controls so voice control actually makes sense to me. And finally there's going to be homebrew kit for beer in the same way that you get coffee machines so you canput the ingredients in the capsule that would produce beer.

Georgia - Some of my housemates brew beer and it takes them a very long time and makes a massive mess. So how would tech help speed this up?

Peter - It’s just a rumour! I’ve seen a photo, that’s all.

Chris - Do you just add alcohol then? Do you put the booze in as a separate supply?

Peter - It probably actually creates the alcohol as is any Beer Kit would do.

Georgia - And when you say foldable phones like I'm imagining a flip phone...

Peter - No I think it'd be more than that. I think the LCD screens are becoming flexible more and more, in time we will have packaging on the side of our cola cam which will actually have your own message on it. Hello Peter. Drink me.

Georgia - And what about out of the home? What about travelling? Is there any big changes coming?

Peter - Well outside the home autonomous vehicles are moving on. There's still a lot of societal and regulatory work that needs to be done before they become adopted.

Georgia - We are constantly hearing though autonomous vehicles are sort of they're coming they're coming they're coming but do you reckon 2019 will be the year?

Peter - No, there’ll be a lot going on in the background, there's a lot of work going on in terms of vision systems etc., where we went to see progress but not that much. About 18 months ago I was on the programme talking about taxis in Dubai. These are effectively drones. They still haven't arrived yet.

Chris - They’ve got hover bikes though because I was asked to comment on this recently. They're equipping the police with these things which are basically a motorbike with 4 fans one, two on the front two on the back and it looks like a really good way to take someone's head off actually if you were to come in a little bit low. They're un-enclosed fan blades, if you fell off you would mince yourself.

Peter - They're actually Wankel engines and in there, four Wankel engines. Whether they’ll get adopted I don’t know, but he's really working that project for many years.

Georgia - I'd like one of them for Christmas.

Chris -  You wouldn’t want to fall off Georgia I'm not kidding because literally these massive blades going around thousands of revs a minute. They’d mince you.

Georgia - Are there any sort of other fun toys you've got your eye on?

Peter -  I’m a very early adopter, so a couple of things I really would like would be some pair of earphones that Bluetooth that you can sleep on. You know that will protect the ears for ride noise cancellation but also you're not going to be totally discomfort but by themselves you can listen to the naked scientist where you're going to pay the extra fee.

Chris - You do know Peter at this conference you're talking about the tech conference. You do know what gadget headlined there couple of years ago don't you? It was some it was radiation repelling boxer shorts.

Peter - Haven't you got some?

Chris -  No no I haven't actually but I toyed with the idea. They've got this sort of silver thread in the material and the idea is this mesh work of silver thread soaks up radiation from your mobile phone in your pocket might be incident on your manhood. Yeah. And because it's silver, the anti microbial effects of silver also mean that you'll keep down the germ load in your boxer shorts as well!

Georgia - What about on a society level? Is there a huge amount going on there?

Peter - Yes, for instance it's said that three countries will ban autonomous or semi autonomous vehicles during the next year, but the same time some rubbish collection will start actually start to be autonomous. This Duplex voice chat bot. That's a bit of a mouthful. I talked about that some months ago. This is Google duplex actually where you're talking to a computer that's umming and erring and pausing and etc. There's got to be some work on that to stop people being conned by that. Drone regulations, We know that's got to happen because we will have more more drones and there's likely to be more accidents. And of course the big one  - fake news  - something's got to happen about the way that media is distributed to our feeds.