A purchased future becomes somebody’s expected life.
Everyone expects
Parents screen for inherited conditions.
What I found
Meet your child before deciding to have them.
A fertility service offers parents a conversation with a simulation of the adult their future child might become. Selection turns into an encounter with an apparent person.
Then the child grows up. Their parents remember the adult they selected and begin comparing the real child with that purchased image.
The story follows a speculative service into identity, expectation and the freedom to become somebody other than the person a parent thought they had chosen.
Explore more of this kind of work
This is an original public scenario. Bring your subject, research or planning question to develop a world and explore its consequences.
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Everyone expectsA smart planter tells you when to water.
A visit to the garden centre becomes a visit to a pet shop. AI and sensors give plants and fungi voices and personalities.
Follow how it could happenYour bacon has something to say.
Everyone expectsAI detects distress on farms.
AI decodes animal calls, and people hear what their dog, their cattle and their dinner are actually saying. It could be the most moving thing technology ever does.
Follow how it could happenThe forest would like a word.
Everyone expectsSensors monitor an ecosystem.
What if a walk through a forest became a conversation with the ecosystem around you? Sensors and AI no longer only report conditions.
Follow how it could happenA subject, a technology, a question or a body of research.