Future scenarios
and design fiction.

Everyone expectsVisitors watch the lions.

What if the main attraction at the zoo was you, as a robot deer, trying not to be eaten by lions?

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.

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.

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.

Everyone expectsDe-extinct animals return to zoos.

Everyone can picture the restored animal in a reserve. Who pictures the first person to hunt it, the restaurant serving it, the antlers on the wall or the customer who…

Everyone expectsGene editing makes healthier pets.

What else do people want from animals once changing them becomes possible? Not only better health.

Everyone expectsThe restaurant sells a sustainable menu.

Protesters press against the glass while diners eat endangered meat. The enormous bill pays for conservation.

Everyone expectsCarbon credits pay for planting trees.

What if tigers earned carbon credits for eating the deer that eat the saplings? The forest’s owners begin to see predation as something they can earn from.

Everyone expectsAI invention engines make discovery faster and cheaper for everyone.

Imagine invention engines generating new drugs, materials, processes and products faster than organisations can use them. The possibility looks like abundance.

Everyone expectsRobots get an app store, like phones.

RoboStore finances cheap robots, controls access to the customers and keeps the learning generated by everybody’s applications. Manufacturers supply the bodies.

Everyone expectsFood printers pipe your own ingredients into shapes.

Why buy a machine to assemble dinner when a factory can assemble it and sell it to you in a tray?

Everyone expectsYour AI assistant books a holiday.

People delegate their money, preferences and political priorities to AI agents.

Everyone expectsAI agents are individual assistants.

Agents acting together need ways to recognise one another, establish reputations, make commitments and settle disputes.

Everyone expectsAI changes political messaging.

What if people subscribed to an organisation that recruited representatives and funded their political work?

Everyone expectsAI helps authorities predict a crowd.

AI coordination does not stop at purchases and investments. A temporary group can also become a coordinated crowd able to overwhelm an institution’s ordinary capacity to…

Everyone expectsAdverts interrupt the programme.

You are watching television. The service knows what just broke in your house, finds the obscure spare part, checks that it fits and sorts out the purchase.

Everyone expectsRobot wars will be about killing.

Armies that mass to attack are seen and hit within minutes, so taking territory costs more than it’s worth. In this scenario, an aggressor stops trying.

Everyone expectsForests are saved by agreements and incentives.

Suppose a superpower confronted with a climate emergency intervenes to make a forest’s products commercially unusable, then leaves. The premise is not conquest.

Everyone expectsGeoengineering is a shared climate response.

What if an intervention that improves conditions for one country worsens them for another?

Everyone expectsThe government decides to take back control.

A government recognises a dangerous dependency and decides to act. The suppliers have gone. The skills have faded. The infrastructure is committed elsewhere.

Everyone expectsSmall countries buy their own armed forces.

Military research and obsolescence accelerate until smaller countries cannot keep up.

Everyone expectsDigital citizenship helps people move.

What if membership providers bundled the services associated with a country across territorial boundaries?

Everyone expectsExoskeletons help people at work.

Advanced armour and physical augmentation go on sale. Wealthy enthusiasts do not all use them for industrial work.

Everyone expectsAI tutors personalise education.

Star, a recruitment company, offers free AI-supported education to children whose schooling has been repeatedly interrupted.

Everyone expectsThe world cannot agree how to house refugees.

Liam O’Donovan can no longer bear watching people die while an adequate response fails to appear.

Everyone expectsCities add trees and air conditioning.

A family pays every month for four places in a cooled shelter ten minutes from home. They have never used them.

Everyone expectsAI writes the news.

What if the reporter standing in front of an interviewee was a machine? A human journalist could enter a dangerous or remote situation through a telepresence body rather…

Everyone expectsA human remains in control of the weapon.

Guns that aim themselves and fire on a thought, worn on the hip. A raised pair of hands used to prove you couldn’t shoot. Now it proves nothing.

Everyone expectsRobot dogs carry guns.

Real dogs still beat robots on stairs, rubble and fences. So the gun goes on a real dog.

Everyone expectsParents screen for inherited conditions.

A fertility service offers parents a conversation with a simulation of the adult their future child might become.

Everyone expectsWe preserve the record of our success.

A future society searches the records for the causes of its collapse. Purchases, flights, professional achievements and ordinary habits become material for a judgement…

Everyone expectsA time gate lets us rescue our descendants.

A time gate connects us with people living in a damaged future. We have resources they need. They have labour we can buy cheaply.

Everyone expectsNeural interfaces restore lost abilities.

People can purchase appearances in somebody else’s dreams. Aiden keeps seeing the same woman. His suspicion grows alongside feelings he does not want to dismiss.

Everyone expectsAn emergency is something to end.

Farmers in microlights herd vultures along refugee trails, following forecasts of where people are likely to die. Rival herders compete for territory.

Everyone expectsTechnology makes donating more efficient.

Families needing assistance advertise themselves. Donors and teams compete through impact scores.

Everyone expectsBillionaires race into space.

Dying billionaires race one way to Mars. A terminally ill volunteer on a one-way mission is an old idea; the contest is new.

Everyone expectsSpace travel gets cheaper.

Space travel becomes automated and ordinary enough to sell as an experience.

Everyone expectsAdvertising pays for free apps.

The barber’s mirror shows advertising through the cut. Customers who agree to watch pay less. The bargain spreads from media into ordinary purchases and services.