As we commemorate the 150th birthday of Guglielmo Marconi, we reflect on the impact of his pioneering work in communication technology. His innovations demonstrated the potential of technology to connect people across great distances, transcending physical barriers. With Marconi’s legacy in mind, we asked our Board Members and Marconi Fellows to share their thoughts on the most important information and communications technologies that will shape our world in the next five years.

William Webb, Board Member

My view is that we are unlikely to see any significant new ICT technologies in the next five years. It generally takes much longer – 10 years or more for new concepts to emerge and prove their value. And it is hard to single out one technology. We have a complex ICT system that builds on the Internet and uses fiber, mobile, Wi-Fi and many other technologies to keep us connected via phones, laptops, and other devices. Cloud storage and search allow us to find what we want. If I had to pick one of these I’d say the Internet. Without it, modern life would be unthinkable and most of our devices would barely work. Of course, the Internet is not new, and hardly changes now, other than adding more capacity. That, in a way, is a testament to how well it does its task.

Vicente San Miguel, Board Member

Intelligent machines, either physical or virtual, will be broadly available in the same way that Ford T did in the past with our cities. They will create intensive ethical, economic, and future job debates. Virtual reality interaction will also change the way we work and entertain in this period. These technologies will pose significant challenges to Networks and Data Centers, which will require more Fiber and 5G deployments to cope with the connectivity demand. Getting these capabilities closer to the customers, either silicon or carbon, will also require new communications capacities to be deployed.

Legacy of Guglielmo Marconi

Arogyaswami Paulraj, 2014 Marconi Fellow and Board Member

Guglielmo Marconi was not only a visionary inventor and engineer but, more importantly, went on to commercialize his wireless technology. His entrepreneurial spirit and the establishment of the Marconi Company played a pivotal role in the widespread adoption of wireless technology. I tend to see the latter as his greatest contribution because it was the key to making the benefits of wireless technology widely available.

Marconi’s work did not stop at long-distance point-to-point wireless telegraphy. He also played a crucial role in the development of radio broadcasting, ushering in a new era of radio broadcasting and paving the way for mass market music, news, and entertainment through the airwaves.

The significance of Marconi’s contributions to wireless communication cannot be overstated. His work brought people closer together, transcending geographical boundaries and revolutionizing global telecommunications.

Andrew Viterbi, 1990 Marconi Fellow

During the last half of the nineteenth century a British mathematician, James Clerk Maxwell, and a German physicist, Heinrich Hertz, theoretically predicted and experimentally proved the phenomenon of electromagnetic wave propagation, which is known today as wireless. But it was the Italian visionary amateur scientist, Guglielmo Marconi, who foresaw and demonstrated the practical use of this phenomenon which by the beginning of the twenty-first century has connected together virtually all the residents of Earth as well as a few travelers of Space.

The history of this remarkable technological evolution, and at times revolution, fills countless scholarly journals, books, and patents. Over the century and a quarter, since Marconi demonstrated the practical employment of electromagnetic waves to transmit telegraph messages over great distances, millions of engineers and scientists have toiled to build the conglomeration of devices, systems, and networks that constitute modern wireless communication. One of our Marconi Society Fellows, the late Paul Baran, suggested a comic caricature of the process: “Each of many workers brought a single brick to add to the framework of the structure as a small contribution to building the edifice.”