Future day, few questions

Mr. Future wakes up, pick up his device and gets a notification. “You slept well and you feel refreshed”. Dismissing the notification, he moves with his morning chores.

While looking for his breakfast options his device provides a notification listing all the available options. He runs through the listing and choose one. Based on his selection, recipe for his breakfast is display, he goes through the recipes, find items from the fridge and kitchen completes his breakfast.

As he catches up on the news, a notification appears suggesting him that it is time to leave home for a meeting which is in a different part of the city. As he looks at the notification, the device provides him with estimated time, possible routes, congestions and alternative routes. He selects a route and starts his travel in an automated vehicle.

Information is captured on the device during the meeting through voice, texts and images. Based on the information captured his device complies a list of information which could be shared post meeting. After a quick cursory review, Mr. Future shares the information.

For lunch, Mr. Future is provided with a list of restaurants and also list of his contacts who are in and around by his device. He reviews the list of restaurants based on customer feedback, menu, price, and selects one for his lunch. He shares the location of selected restaurant with his contact list and meets few over lunch.

Heading out for another meeting, Mr. Future receives a meeting cancellation notification. Immediately, his device pulls up a things to do list with a suggested priority. His device also suggest few recreational activities which Mr. Future is interested in as his location is close to clubs and recreational facilities he is associated with.

Completing few tasks from list suggested, he heads out for a golf game with his contacts identified by his device.

For the evening catch up with friends, his device list all the recent key life events of friends and suggests a surprise that can be planned. He reviews the key life events, orders for a cake, a gift and surprises his friends. During the conversation with his friends, his device provides information / updates on the events at the restaurant, offers and key feeds on news.

Travelling back, Mr. Future’s device lets him know of the items to be ordered for next day’s breakfast and travel / administrative arrangements to be made for his upcoming conference in another city. He reviews the suggestions, orders for breakfast, selects the appropriate travel mode and travel time, books accommodation and connects with service provider in another city for arranging the conference.

At the end of the day, his device, provides him a summary of the day, key takeaways and action items. Mr. Future is informed that it is time for him to sleep which will enable him to “feel rested and refreshed”.

A day in the life of Mr. Future is enabled by combing technologies such as cellular connectivity, geo location mapping, artificial intelligence, machine and deep learning, internet of things, speech and voice recognition, robotics, unmanned vehicle and many others.

A looks into Mr. Future’s day, poses the following questions about emerging technologies:

• Can and will the smart technologies that are being developed become smarter than the developers and gain the ability to control the developers / users
• Will automation be restricted to only mundane tasks or will we explore possibilities of automating everything and anything
• Is advancement in technology empowering us or making us more vulnerable
• Can devices / machine learn and reflect human values, emotions and feelings