How we’ll Spend Our Free Time 2025 – Fast Future’s Life in 2025: “Say Hello Say Goodbye” Scenarios

By Rohit Talwar, Steve Wells, and Alexandra Whittington

Fast Future’s Life in 2025: “Say Hello Say Goodbye” Scenarios were developed in partnership with Huawei Consumer Business Group. This latest scenario explores how a range of exponentially advancing technologies such as AI nd big data could transform leisure.

In a world where the demands and temptations of technology are challenging us as we seek to keep up, whilst retaining a sense of control over our time and actions, technology itself may play a vital role in life management. For example, the ability to use digital for work, play, learning, and socialising anywhere and everywhere means the potential for no natural downtime and so, using technology to help us decouple from the digital world is key.

Technology could become a trusted gatekeeper – barring our access to social media so we can sleep and by auto responding to work emails and texts, ensuring that we don’t have to answer them late into the night. This AI technology might also pre-emptively manage our schedule, protect our personal time, and create space for thinking and completing our own tasks alongside the seemingly never-ending demand for meetings.

• Say goodbye to…Unproductive social media scrolling – our smartphones could help direct us to the most interesting content according to our interests, highlight where we’ve missed an important update or event invite from a friend, and give us a gentle nudge to reconnect with those we might have inadvertently lost touch with.

With our friends, the technology will help take over the tasks of arranging nights out, managing event budgets, and organising activities for a group of two or more people. On the night, AI will take care of splitting the bill, so that it is either divided equally or everyone pays their fair share according to their actual consumption – even keeping track down to the amount of wine each person drank.

Party planning might be completely stress-free with an AI assistant in charge. Imagine the surprises in store if you were to let a robot plan your birthday celebration. All our special memories and events could be digitally captured to be re-experienced someday in VR. In 2025, we might attend entirely AR-based parties with scavenger hunts, enjoying hired appearances by holograms of celebrity guests (dead or alive), or use the immersive technology to attend live social events virtually.

• Say goodbye to…Boring events – might be eliminated as AI technology can produce endless scenarios for entertainment.
• Absent friends - fewer friends might flake on special events, so that more socialisation, not less, could be the outcome.

The advent of AI powered and 5G enabled AR and VR would allow us to accumulate new experiences while relaxing at home within fully immersive environments, enabling us to explore, interact, learn, and experience things we might never be able or willing to do in the real world. This might also enable us to enjoy truly immersive experiences, virtually connecting us with friends, family, and loved ones when we can’t be together, or even starting relationships with someone we had not physically met.

Technology could increasingly free up leisure time, with AI, drones, and domestic robots taking on more domestic tasks - from cleaning and washing clothes to compiling tax returns and trip planning. That free time could be invested in learning to sing, compose music, develop craft skills, or acquire new languages. These learning experiences would all take place under the careful guidance of an unwaveringly supportive and enthusiastic AI AI tutor with infinite patience.

Since making beautiful things may be easily automated in-home, a future hobby might be producing art with an AI assistant that can write songs or paint. An AI guide could make pastimes like sewing or crafting easier for those who are not artistic but enjoy making unique items – this may also be true for older people whose eyesight or motor skills are in decline.

3D printers might put the power to create beautiful home décor into the hands of more people, even allowing amateur designers to grow their hobby into a side business. We may be enabled to beautify our world and improve our lives in our free time thanks to smart tech at our fingertips.

• Say goodbye to…Mass-produced goods – which may become gauche, as personal design skills expand. Producing things may replace the activity of buying things. For some, ecological considerations and the commitment to recycle would be coupled with the desire to engage in crafts and bring their personal creativity to bear. This could lead to a big rise in the maker movement. We could also see less inclination to shop frivolously for things in the home, with a greater personal meaning behind and investment in the items we create. This might improve the perceived value of the regular things we do own.

The authors are futurists with Fast Future - a professional foresight firm specializing in delivering keynote speeches, executive education, research, and consulting for global clients on the emerging future and the impacts of change. To arrange a presentation on the Life in 2025 scenarios please contact [email protected]

To access more of our articles and learn more about our work please visit www.fastfuture.com

You can find summaries of the ten scenarios here https://consumer.huawei.com/uk/campaign/truestories/tech/

To find out more about the developments, ideas, tools, and approaches to help you navigate a fast changing future, why not attend one of the events taking place during Fast Future’s London Futures Week - March 30th - April 5th 2020.