Microsoft innovator looks to fairer future

The Economist magazine recently claimed that Craig Mundie was such a familiar figure in Washington he had become 'the secretary of state for Microsoft'.

The company appointed him chief research and strategy officer last year in anticipation of chairman Bill Gates's departure from a day-to-day role next year.

Mr Mundie says Microsoft is working to ensure that the benefits of innovation are distributed around the world without leaving poorer people behind.

"We don't think of it as countries that are less developed, but as segments of populations in every country," he said.

"There are people in the United States who don't have a lot of money or don't have great education, even though it's one of the wealthiest countries in the world.

"So we've really started to think about how we design products to serve the different income levels or strata within a society."

Mr Mundie says the company has now formed a section called Unlimited Potential Group.

"Their job is to take our technology and form into offers that are attractive for people in the middle income areas and ultimately even for people below the welfare line, where governments or philanthropy have to become partners in being able to get the technology delivery," he said.

Personal robots

Mr Gates recently spoke of the personal robot industry, speculating that by 2025 it will be worth some $50 billion a year or 10 times its value today. Mr Mundie says robots could be very useful.

"We tend to think that robotics is in its infancy, and about where the personal computer was around 1982 or '83: people could see them but they really didn't have an appreciation for how potent they would be," he said.

"Personal robotics, I think, could have a lot of implications, particularly in a society where globally, people are ageing more.

"The better we get at health care, the longer people live. The longer they live, the more challenges we have in caring for them."

Mr Mundie says as our parents age, typically one of them dies and the other is left to live alone, getting increasingly frail.

"We end up basically deciding we have to put them in some kind of assisted living environment," he said.

"That's often very disruptive to them, emotionally and physically, and it's very expensive. In the United States right now, I think it costs about on average $80,000 a year to put a parent into an assisted living environment."

Robots to help the aged

They would much prefer to live at home, he says, but safety and security are the main concerns.

"So I think we're going to be able to provide personal robotic assistance that would actually live with grandma in her home and would be able to help lift things that she can't lift, and would observe, and to the extent that if she falls over, they can get help or even pick her up," he said.

"You then have to ask yourself the question, let's say that I can have such a robot and it cost $30,000. If it costs you $80,000 to put her in an assisted living facility or $30,000 to let her stay in her own home, maybe you'll buy the robot. And she might be far happier."

It may sound like a scenario straight out of a futuristic movie, but Mr Mundie says such a robot could be on the market in less than 10 years.

Given that many older people are not familiar with newer technology - even video recorders - Mr Mundie says the robots would have to be very user-friendly.

"I would hazard a guess that the contemporary devices that are more intelligent, like personal video recorders, are actually easier to use than the old VCRs with the flashing 12:00 problem," he said.

"But if I can just talk to the video recorder and say 'Tape CSI all season', which largely we can almost do today, then in fact, you transcend this problem of the technology being scary to people."

Changes to TV

The future of free-to-air television is a topic of debate in Australia, and Mr Mundie is predicting a big shift.

"I think there will be a business which is strictly ad-supported delivery; I don't think it'll predominantly be brought by terrestrial broadcast television," he said.

"I personally think that traditional terrestrial broadcast, as a delivery system, is largely being supplanted by these other mechanisms.

"The idea that in real time you watch some video that's getting broadcast from a studio and you're watching it, you know, nanoseconds later in your home, I think that will increasingly disappear." © 2007 Australian Broadcasting Corporation