Writing something regarding the future is like writing a promise; it calls you to some responsibilities because if you know today what tomorrow will be like, you will probably also have to do something.
Please think of how much things changed when we went from muscle power alone for agriculture, for the economy, and for all the work of our ancestors to the industrial revolution, which transformed the entire agricultural-craft-commercial system into a grand, efficient, modern system, characterized by the widespread use of machines driven by mechanical power and the use of new energy sources. It all happened unexpectedly, harshly, and shockingly in a few decades.
But soon, we began to realize that something special was happening in the course of our history and our future. Then, a few decades later, an incredible, unique, crazy thing happened, anticipated by very few who in the 1970s and 1980s, were boasting things in favor of “computers” that would do everything, but even they were wrong!
It happened that computers did nothing; it was the man who did something incredible; he managed to build his second dimension of life, the immaterial dimension, with which he could share thoughts, words, images, sounds, videos … thanks to the invention of what today is more a way of life than a mass of wires and devices, I am talking about the invention and daily use of the Internet.
With the immaterial dimension, humanity immediately projected himself into his new future, into a second dimension parallel to the material one, dimensions that would never have touched each other and that, at the speed of light, the immaterial one would allow him to hire hundreds, thousands, millions, billions of “partners,” of like-minded people, to share progress with them, to innovate together, to build together, to progress together.
The digital age was born, but today, in 2022, we are still facing a new great, immense step, which this time will take us into a future so unimaginable that perhaps we can only … dream.
From a technical, logical, scientific point of view, I believe that our future and what will happen in the coming decades is “simply” the union of what we have done up to now, the association of the two dimensions, the material dimension, made by our thousands of years of experience, battles, achievements, discoveries in physical, material life and the immaterial dimension, possible thanks to the digitization of our works, our thoughts of our problems and our goals.
The union of these two dimensions will lead us to an extraordinarily accelerated life, in which we will have total control of DATA, and this will mean that we will be able to manage what was considered unmanageable; for example, we will be able to remedy any defect in our DNA, disease as we know it today will not exist within a maximum of 40 years, everything we can manage with data we will manage, and this will allow us to give much more space to everything else, our emotions, our physicality, our creativity.
We will live extraordinarily well and spend time figuring out who we are.
So let me dream, let me wake up in… Berlin, on the morning of September 26th, 2058: I am 57 years old, I have a black beard, even my hair will be raven black, because the night before I had decided, the color of my skin, my hair and more, I can choose when I want, it is just a matter of data managed by my home machine learning system.
I wake up and taste my delicious coffee; I still love coffee; it reminds me of my youth; although now coffee is free of harmful elements, it has a basic PH, and I can drink as many as I want. I think of my son, and he answers me we don’t need physical devices to connect us; miniaturized sensing (chips under the skin) is cheap and convenient even for managing this personal data, and we combine it with our bodies as mobile.
I dress in cotton and classic materials, but I always decide their color and shape with thought.
I don’t leave the house to start working; the concept of work has changed a lot; I have already worked at night completing a project thanks to a couple of ideas that came to me while I was resting; I leave the house to think about my friends, who can’t find a new tennis racket, I have a lot of time to myself, but I also know that I can’t stay disconnected, during a game of tennis, while sleeping, I could always be called by my colleagues, a problem at robotics might require my creativity, the only natural human resource to solve the most delicate problems.
For lunch, I choose a new restaurant with traditional velvet chairs and briarwood tables; I go in and kiss the entrance cruet, which will allow the chef to isolate my DNA and set up the robotics in the kitchen so that it can cook whatever I ask for but in a way that helps my body and does not counteract my genetics.
I must travel to Rome; I leave at 2 p.m. with the first HyperLoop by 3 p.m. I am in Rome, where I cross the city in seconds; a little nostalgic about the absence of traffic lights and drivers, but the advantage of being able to move quickly and safely even in the city I appreciate too much.
Around 5 p.m. I go to a café to relax, fall asleep, and continue a chess game left unfinished with Hal 10000, a cognitive robot, fantastic and usable even during sleepy times. At 6 p.m. I go for Berlin, where my clinic awaits me at 7 p.m. for a complete check of my vitals, at my home, with a fireplace burning with fire and wood but emitting neither smoke nor pollutants.
At 8 p.m., I asked Jarvis, my personal assistant, to prepare dinner for me as I had enjoyed it at Frederick’s birthday party (a fellow student of mine 50 years ago). He has all my personal information. He will arrange it for me (he will use as many as 23 different vendors from Berlin, transportation is by the usual food drone corridors).
The evening has come, and it’s time to relax; I call, again with the thought, two friends, and we go on our rounds of caring for the city’s homeless people. The modernity of society has not solved certain situations. Still, it has made them less complicated for those who want to manage them: the poor have homes, food, and everything they need to survive, but some are miserable, they don’t work, they can’t find satisfaction, they don’t want to have relationships with machines, and they don’t have any with humans. Those who can help should do that; talking to them is an excellent way to start.
This is how I see our future, where human relationships will be central, much stronger than they are today.
Everything else … wi11 b3 d0n3 8y a mach1n3333… 1010101110000010100100
