What happens when it all works?
It’s the future. You’ve got a battery that lasts for days. It charges wirelessly as you’re around various electric transmitting units and can even charge via directional charging from the old tower system when you’re outside.
Connectivity is fast enough that apps run hybrid on a device and on a cloud server based on what the phone is most capable of. Got bandwidth but not processing power/battery? It’s on the cloud. Got a supercomputer? It’s on your phone.
Biopresence / identification sensors have completely removed the possibility of slicing off someone’s fingers and using them to unlock, even requiring certain transactions to be conducted away from other people. Those other people also on record as being present. Crime with phones, even at gunpoint, became a losing proposition as peer to peer biopresence identification meant you pass near anyone and that’s reported.
But what’s the market now? Nearly indestructible phones with batteries that last forever and all go as fast as any other phone, depending sometimes on location. Phone tech is dead. You can get a CAT scan, monitor your health, see through walls, never own a cord again as you’re wireless everything.
Everyone can build a phone. Open hardware, 3D printing, there’s a little customization that can be accomplished but it’s all absurdly overpowered devices with connectivity capable of downloading the entire internet of 2021 in a few seconds.
There are no dead spots on earth. Slightly slower satellite communication, once used for emergencies only, becomes a fallback.
Hardware innovation is dead.
Software has no hardware limits anymore. The metaverse is a near flawless representation of what it wants to be. The only limit is the imagination of the programmers, or the users as they theme their lives. Conversational AIs who help and are useful appear and are instantly used to murder someone and then limits set to prevent that happening.
App development platforms pop out allowing anyone to make an app, game, or pretty much anything. App and game creation’s learning curve drops.
Technology like Starlink comes to the metaverse, so porn… new porn…
The main phone blogs are still talking about whatever phone gives them the most commission money, although at this point the rumors, leak renders, etc are fully automated, even more so than the cut and past and replace Phone X with Phone Y we’ve got now.
Telepresence robots allow remote workers to pop in and water their plant and look for old files. There don’t have to be a lot of these, just one per business or so as who needs to be tele present all the time? What? Janice log out of the robot I’ve got to look at the paper files from 2014!
Telepresence and decent video have torn down borders, both regional and country. In some cases it’s torn away working for a company, instead working for several in different categories as time allows for non-critical bored people who are good at a lot of things.
It becomes apparent it’s cheaper for everyone on the entire supply chain to deliver product to you. The last of the malls fall to cash advance stores, those spaces open up. There’s nowhere that’s needed to go and there’s no compelling reason to go out for most people.
The world is open, you can see it in AR, VR, you can interact with it in telerobotic fashion, but it’s a long way away from your home.
And yeah, those blogs are still talking about the newest Pixel or OnePlus aren’t they? Man the commission on that must be amazing.
Catfishing via AR filters becomes just a thing you expect, Twinstagram rolls out a blue “Verified not a bot” checkmark for posts where the biopresence sensor reports the person is actually there.
People live and interact in the metaverse in different neighborhoods, laws enacted regarding trespass, eviction, shadow bans as virtual property has real world consequences to mental health and wellbeing.
AI and machine learning does business. Consumer society consumed enough that it’s forming a chrysalis. Food, shelter, and experience become the primary consumables in the market. Energy’s mostly handled by renewable sources, and maintenance on that is part of your taxes, which that part, at least, goes down every year.
A sense of “this is where we’re going” is gone. We’re there. There’s no exit and it’s all done. The world was all explored before you were born. There’s nothing new. There’s no frontier to conquer. Consumer tech is finished with advancements. The world is getting cleaner. AI can find you your perfect partner and introduce you, and machine learning can come on a date to let you know when to shut your mouth.
You’re living in a world where there are no limits, no frontiers, your ancestors built and built until you’re in solid cheat mode. You can live as long as you like, you can create your own space opera, fight virtual demons, but these are your demons.
You’re not sure any more whether the people are real or not. You suspected that you might be the only person in the universe. Do you understand the code? Are robotics that advances? Are you living in a cage? How is The Simpsons still a thing?
The death of the consumer economy shutters millions of businesses worldwide, all of which the employees were able to transition to other things.
Life, it was said, was about testing your limits. And what is it now that you’re on God-Mode and essentially have none?
