A Survey of
the Future

As 2020 demonstrated, our ability to look even a year beyond the present moment is limited. Expand that timeline to half a century, and the shape of the world is anybody’s guess. For the Future Issue, we eschewed a single oracle and instead asked for the predictions of five people in very different industries: a sci-fi writer, a neuroscientist, two futurists and a cyborg anthropologist. Their answers, which oscillate between saccharine utopianism and cynical pessimism, are a telling reminder of just how little we can foresee. The survey also reveals an interesting dichotomy in how we think about the future: Is it better to predict the future we actually think will come to pass, or the one we wish to see?

— How will we communicate? 

AC: The medium by which we communicate may change, but what we communicate will stay the same: music, art, film, worship, love. 

EC: I don’t think our way of communicating will get better or worse. It’ll just go faster. And it’ll be more and more dependent on tech companies. 

KA: What might come to mind is the type of tech. But I think of linguistics—things like memes and poetry, short fragments of text, images, video or sound that are layered with meaning because of how they are shared, and which are shared so fast.

DE: The future will drift away from cellphones in favor of more direct ways
of communication. We will broadcast by making subtle movements of our muscles and understand inputs through patterns of vibration on the skin. This will allow us to always keep our eyes and ears open for other stimuli in the world.

AO: More slowly—with a realization that all of the speed we’ve become accustomed to has caused a lot of unsustainable practices in our lives. 

— What will we wear?

AC: We’ll be wearing things that are made for the long-term again, looking back at the 2020s as the throwaway area. We’ll want to learn again, maybe understanding how meaningful it is to make hand-dyed linen with local berries. 

EC: Just nostalgia. People will look back and see what they think is cool and bring it back. We’ll keep having that 20-year nostalgia loop. Now we’re looking back at the ’90s, and so on.  

KA: From a tech point of view, we’ll see layers of embedded sensing in the clothes we wear, things that might charge electronics or measure data around us.

DE: I think we will have active clothing that isn’t just for fashion and warmth but for communication and sensing.

AO: The same things we love, just for longer. The pandemic laid bare the facade of needing newness. Throwaway culture doesn’t really add that much joy to our lives.

— What will homes look like?

AC: They’re going to be much more tuned to the environment. Like, a desert home will look different from one in the Pacific Northwest. I think homes are going to be cozy, and there will be a deeper understanding of natural light because of a greater push to conserve energy. 

EC: That depends on the class of the person. I could see the rich having smart homes, the middle class living in discount smart homes and the poor just having to live in the same rundown apartments they’ve been in for the last 200 years.

KA: There’s this option that allows for the coming together of more kinds of families in one home: adapting to working, living and being with a bubble of people. 

DE: In my book Livewired, I’ve proposed that homes will eventually be able to utilize the principles of plasticity that we see in biology.¹  So if you are using the kitchen more, it will grow in size. If you have guests, and many people need to use the bathroom, the number of toilets and sink spigots will grow to accommodate.

AO: Multidimensional spaces and multigenerational homes. People will reconnect with the joy of rootedness that balances home, work and play, and they’ll welcome a much more diverse perspective on what co-living means—a co-living that spans generations.

— What will we eat?

AC: Everyone will be eating bugs and thinking of cow meat as the most disgusting thing. We’re also going to eat our trash because it’ll be biodegradable. And, importantly, what we eat will be totally dependent on our local environment and match the climate.

EC: Same crap we always eat. I sound like a pessimist. But food is an economic thing. And unless the economy changes, healthy food won’t be available to all people. 

KA: Definitely fewer animals, more plants. And we’ll have to eat even more plants because the nutrients of plants will be lower because of climate change. Lab-grown meat will be common too.

DE: All animal-based products, from meat to milk, will be replaced by lab-grown alternatives.

AO: Much of what we eat now. But with less of a focus on hyper-convenience, and more interconnectedness. This will mean only eating certain things at certain times, and eating what your community cultivates.