A Vision of 2050
I wake up to the sound of crashing waves and the soft glow of the early morning sun on the ocean. I am staying in La Jolla, California for the second half of August 2050. It's a great place to be at this time of year. Mild, warm weather, soft ocean breezes, and good vibes all around. It's so easy to cycle between locations now. I can just pack a few clothes and toiletries and electronics, hop on an autonomous flight and I'm there. Work is hardly affected, as I can collaborate with colleagues in lifelike VR. Summering in an idyllic seaside community is now a common thing, not a rich person's privilege. Travel is so cheap and easy and the essentials of life are so portable that many humans have cycled all the way back to a nomadic existence. People can optimize for climate, local activities, and where friends and family are.
Not that there’s anything wrong with your main home. It’s perched up in the hills 20 miles outside of a city, giving you peace, quiet, access to nature, and an amazing view. And you have the same access to services as you had when you lived right downtown. With a VTOL, it takes 5 minutes to get anywhere in the city, at any time. So you get the best of both worlds. You wake up to the sound of birds chirping and the sight of the sun rising, spend the day having fun in the city, then see the sun set on a beautiful, serene scene at your home. A beautiful, spacious home in an idyllic setting is the norm now. The hard choice between peace and quiet and access to services and amenities has been replaced by a combination that is better than all but the richest few had access to before.
In my heads-up display, I see that I attained a perfect sleep score last night. I ask out loud "Why might that be?" A response is read back: "You consumed 50 mg of caffeine yesterday, 50% less than usual. You also ran early in the morning. These are both strongly correlated with high-quality sleep for you."
"OK, what am I doing this morning?" "Since exercise in the morning seems to have many benefits for you and you did aerobic exercise yesterday, I suggest a 30-minute strength training session at 6:30 this morning. Sound good?" "Sure. I'm planning to finish my morning routine at 8 and do six hours of focused work today. We can nail down the details later. Thanks."
I complete my workout and see that my friend happens to have worked out at the same time. Exercise is tracked automatically for both of us. We exchange encouragement. We're in a fitness group together with all of our key metrics automatically tracked and reported to the group in a dashboard. Maintaining excellent fitness has become so easy and fun that the average person is as fit as someone in the 99th percentile in 2020. Having a biological age that is 5 years less than your chronological age is now common.
It's 8. Time to get down to work. I review the schedule my intelligent assistant has generated for the work day. It sees that I have a project I aimed to finish today, so it lays out the last few tasks around my typical workday schedule, two that require high energy before lunch and a routine one for the low-energy period after lunch. As scheduling is largely taken care of for me, I am free to focus on what I’m best at.
I finish work and check my agenda for the rest of the day. I’m going to have dinner at a friend's house 200 miles away. I hop in a VTOL and enter my destination and it flies me directly there. On the way, I check in with my family back home. I am transported to the living room at my parents’ house, along with my other siblings superimposed into a realistic scene. It's almost like being together, without having to make the trip. In an hour, I end the call and I’ve arrived for dinner. I land in my friend's yard and enjoy a good old-fashioned in-person dinner.
On the way back home, I review the day by looking at my usual metrics: amount of exercise, time spent meditating, quality time with friends and family, and amount of focused work time, all automatically measured. It was a good day! I dictate some reflections on the day that are perfectly transcribed into my notes. Then I take a minute to plan the next day, starting with a suggested schedule from my AI assistant. Now it's getting late. My display starts to dim and distracting apps fade from view. My assistant suggests that the ideal time to go to bed would be 9:30, so I do.
It’s a life of variety, fun, and fulfillment, enhanced by intelligent assistance with everything from tracking exercise and diet to flying from point A to B to spending time with friends and family. Advances in autonomous personal transportation have expanded the world for the average person. People spend less time in drudgery and more time in flow as they thrive in a world of technology-enabled abundance.