It is frightening, even dangerous, and very inefficient because when in doubt it is safer to take the child in.But suppose you and the doctor on duty had a high-quality video link by the child’s bed, and the doctor had access to his or her medical records. You ring the GP, get some centralised medical service, try to explain what is wrong, and then have to make a judgement whether to race to hospital or not. Much less apparent will be the way the next phase of the communications revolution changes the way goods and services are produced.An example: a child is taken ill in the night. There will be lots of new products and services that we, as consumers, will choose to buy, or not That is the obvious bit. Thus, a new hybrid car – the Toyota Prius, for example – is made on a production line, a system of manufacturing invented by Henry Ford.

On the other hand, a Swatch watch looks like an old analogue mechanical one and does the same job, but its quartz innards are completely different.Now apply this to mobile communications. With some new technologies, the product incorporates new technology, but the production method is established; with others, the product is the same, but the way it is made is new. People want to download music, but they don’t seem to want to send photo-messages to each other.So, over the next few years, we will see a tremendous amount of churn: lots of new ways will be developed of using the new technologies as forms of consumption. But even more important will be ways of using the new technologies as a method of production.A word of explanation. But they did think people would want to use the additional bandwidth provided by 3G, and bid vast amounts for the spectrum. The mobile phone companies did not think people would want to text: the system was originally an add-on designed for network engineers to communicate with each other. And we don’t understand enough about human beings, so the experts make huge mistakes.

We know it will happen, is happening, but we don’t know what will converge with what There are clues, of course. The runaway success stories of the past three or four years help us there. Google has demonstrated what you can achieve by being the best search engine. Apple has rejuvenated itself on the back of the magic appeal of the iPod. Skype has made the long-awaited breakthrough in making internet telephony simple and widely available. Meanwhile, cities are wiring themselves to give wireless access in the streets – the City of London’s system will go live in July – so that people can connect with whatever kit they choose.But experience of new technologies shows that we don’t know how they will be used until they are up and running.