Charlie Jane Anders

I'm sure it'll be fine.

And then there's social media.

I can imagine some pretty frickin' dystopian scenarios where things like internet quizzes, dating apps, horoscopes, bots, all combine to drag you down deeper and deeper rabbit holes into bad relationships and worse politics.

But then I think about the conversations that I've had with people who work on AI, and what I always hear from them is that the smarter AI gets, the better it is at making connections.

So maybe the social media of the future will be better.

Maybe it'll help us to form healthier, less destructive relationships.

Maybe we'll have devices that enable togetherness and serendipity.

I really hope so.

And you know, I like to think that if strong AI ever really exists, they'll probably enjoy our weird relationship drama the same way that you and I love to obsess about the real housewives of wherever.

And finally,

I mean, I think a lot about how developments in genetic medicine could improve outcomes for people with cancer or dementia, and maybe one day your 100th birthday will be just another milestone on the way to another two or three decades of healthy, active life.

Maybe the toilet of the future that I mentioned will improve health outcomes for a lot of people, including people in parts of the world where they don't have these complicated sewer systems that I mentioned.

But also, as a transgender person, I like to think, what if we make advances in understanding the endocrine system that improve the options for trans people the same way that hormones and surgeries expanded the options for the previous generation?

So finally, basically, I'm here to tell you, people talk about the future as though it's either going to be a technological wonderland or some kind of apocalyptic poop barbecue.

But the truth is, it's not going to be either of those things.

It's going to be in the middle, it's going to be both, it's going to be everything.

The one thing we do know is that the future is going to be incredibly weird.

Just think about how weird the early 21st century would appear to someone from the early 20th.

And you know, there's a kind of logical fallacy that we all have, where we expect the future to be an extension of the present.

Like, people in the 1980s thought that the Soviet Union would still be around today.