Imagine 2127

A lot of people are starting to think about 2027. I’ve been thinking about 2127.

It started with contemplating Claude Shannon, who used to live near where I live now. He came up with information theory during WW2, the foundation of all software, then he made a bunch of gadgets that seem weirdly trivial and just-for-fun. Perhaps he was born before his time. He could see AI/SI coming, but didn’t have the hardware to build it to the extent I’m sure he would’ve liked to. What would he be working on today? What did people in the distant past imagine today would look like? What do we think the future will look like?

I think people in 1927 would be impressed with our iPhones and self-driving cars, and the sheer scale of our almost 9-billion-person civilization, and the volume of relatively low-cost movement around the earth. They’d be mind-blown by our internet porn and video games. Shocked by our obesity and mental illness situation…but impressed by our plethora of powerful medications and surgeries.

Will we be equivalently awe-struck by 2127?

Probably.

Here’s what I think it will look like:

Space

I’m confident there will be at least 100X+ more satellites in our night sky. Probably a moon base and thousands of humans living in space — in space stations, on the moon, and perhaps Mars, a planet that will be inhabited by 10,000X more robots than in 2027.

Regular people will fly to space for a birthday party.

Insane.

It was once wild to think about a middle-class teenager flying 550 mph from America to Europe, just to hang out and drink for a week. Happens all the time now.

Interstellar travel and colonization will likely be the outward frontier of 2127.

Population of Earth

I think it’ll be lower than today but hard to say. I think the birth rate (optimistically) will have recovered to above or near replacement rate in the majority of countries. I could be wrong.

~8.5 billion people in 2027 probably seemed unlikely in 1927, albeit directionally correct. Today, the population is plateauing, with leading indicators suggesting decline, and perhaps substantial decline in the latter half of the century and early 2100s. Low/sub-replacement birth rates could be offset by extended lifespans, though probably not perpetually.

One of my favorite questions is: what will be the effect of digital superintelligence on the birth rate? It’s a question we can’t answer now, but one we can stick around to find out.

Robots

A lot. Definitely, a lot. I think a 2027 time-traveler would be astounded by the scale of robots. 10-minute delivery on millions of items from Amazon will happen way before 2127. The roads will basically be occupied by ultra-low-cost robotaxis. In many cities, they could be taxpayer-funded or subsidized, like city buses and subways. I wager there will be very luxurious robotaxis (by our 2027 standards).

The mailmen and package deliverers will be mailbots and deliverybots. Likely bipedal, though they can use robotaxis/robovans and smaller wheeled transportation forms like a Segway, moped, or rickshaw, but for bots.

I expect robots at the scale of those in the Transformers films. Will they be economically necessary? Probably not. But with surplus resources and sufficient intelligence, people will make it happen because it will be epic and awe-inspiring art.

Phones and Personal Electronics

I hope the phones thing is over. I don’t know what it will be.

I wouldn’t be surprised if people in 2127 can simply think things and they happen. They don’t have to tap on glass or even say it out loud, although people will likely still do that. People still listen to the radio like it’s 1927.

I kinda hate to say it, but millions of people with neuralinks — advanced, sub-skin brain-computer interfaces — seems likely.

Food

I hope the food is very good. The food today is pretty insane, albeit often poisoned by synthetic crap and metals and pesticides.

I think it’s very hard to predict the state of food in 2127. I’m not super optimistic on this matter. Perhaps the population has fallen, agricultural norms have evolved, and the soil is recovering from a century of heavy industrial monocropping and glyphosate pollution.

Optimistically, we’ll have figured out a more synergistic relationship with food, perhaps decentralizing our food supply and distribution system, and diligently evolving our favorite foods to nourish us better, as we have for millennia.

Biotech

This is the big one I think is going to be truly insane.

What happens when we are thoroughly able to understand and manipulate genetics, and at low cost?

God only knows.

What happens when we can plug our brains in and feel, or not feel, any emotion we want?

What happens if we could delete memories on demand?

I think the major chronic diseases we know today will be relegated to the non-issue category like polio and plague.

I’m thinking addiction, hardcore anxiety/depression, migraine, obesity, carpal tunnel, allergies, arthritis, cardiovascular disease, many cancers — will all be more or less optional.

20-25% of American adults report being depressed. In 2024 the majority of Americans reported two or more chronic illnesses. There’s huge room for improvement. A great outcome is not guaranteed.

Lifespan will probably go up, perhaps dramatically. Healthspan too—quantity AND quality. People running marathons at 100+ years old seems likely.

Suicide and homicide, I hope, are largely a relic of the distant past, thanks to improved understanding of nervous systems and a denser social fabric, with anticipatory intervention/prevention before the black hole of poor health, addiction, and homelessness gets people. Further reduced to near zero by elite crime-reduction services.

Medicine

Personalized and very granular.

We will have more autonomy over ourselves, our nervous systems, our physiological constraints.

To be specific, I think it’ll be relatively easy to choose your height, weight, physique, and personality traits.

Today, many people live in a prison of their own physiological/nervous system dysfunction, although we don’t often word it like that.

People in 2127 will be horrified by the abhorrent living standards and nonsensical, primitive healthcare systems of the 2020s, as we today laugh and scoff at the practices and squalor of previous centuries and cultures.

I think the confluence of writing genetics, brain-computer interfaces, realtime blood/nervous system monitoring, and next generation psychoactive compounds will provide exceptionally pleasant experiences of life.

Digital Superintelligence

Could a country be governed entirely or partially by an autonomous computer system?

Could a company have zero humans working for it?

What happens when everyone has access to someone smarter and more capable than the smartest human in every domain? What happens after 50+ years of that?

We honestly can’t say.

Machine intelligence far exceeding humans is called The Singularity because it’s an “event horizon” we cannot see beyond. Like a black hole. Uncertainty is scary. Risk is uncertainty. But if we have each other, we have solidarity.

New Cities, Neighborhoods, Co-Housing

I do believe we are due for a housing renaissance and that the robotics and concurrent energy revolutions, mixed with some deregulation, will give us the ground to build much more and much higher quality.

We are already seeing the very early days with Terran Robotics printing homes made of earth, and ReFrame pre-fabbing walls with robots.

But the more exciting thing is building entirely new neighborhoods, towns and cities — perhaps revitalizing older ones. I think the key to unlock this is human coordination to organize and incentivize the right mix of people to move to a location and build and/or renovate there simultaneously. We are seeing the early days of this with Esmeralda, Prototown, Freedom Village, Praxis, and others (Supernuclear).

What will it look like in 2127? I don’t know.

I am confident we will have a hyper-abundance of energy from solar and nuclear, billions of robots, plus digital superintelligence. With that combination, it is possible you could vibe-print a neighborhood—would just need a “buildable” property and ideally people to live there.

What Will People Do All Day?

The diversity of activity will be exorbitant.

The Amish will still be farming. Sports players will be sporting. Masseuses will be masseusing. Creators creating. Business people doing business things. Politicians politicking. Skiers will be skiing. Artists will be arting. Gamers gaming. Dancers dancing. And so on.

People will be doing work in outer space. Jobs we don’t have words for now will exist.

I think a problem many will face is an undercurrent of apathy. The world is too safe. It’s too easy to survive; hard to thrive. What is left to explore? What are we supposed to be doing? Most will indulge in endless pleasures and thrills, worship their gods, follow the herds, and be just fine and dandy with that.

People will find meaning where they always have: self-understanding and improvement, relationships, art, procreation, competition, exploration, and religion.

I think there will be tremendous demand for experiences like wilderness expeditions, yoga retreats, matchmaking services/experiences, adventure sports, and thrill seeking.

What will stay the same

A lot.

Generally good advice will continue to be: don’t overthink it, try to stay alive and help people, especially good people, and continuously discern what good means.

If people were doing it in 1927, they probably will be in 2127.

Gardening, riding bikes, making music, pottery, books, love.

People will still walk, run, slide, and roll up and down mountains just for fun.

People will kick and throw balls around with 100k onlookers going nuts.

I could be way off. It might be the case that humans become complacent. We stop innovating, creating, building, and trying to improve. We start seizing wealth from entrepreneurs and workers, stifling our meritocratic economy in the name of fairness, equality, and diversity. It is also possible that we create dangerous machines that nobody knows how to control. It is possible that the birth rate continues falling and struggles to reverse and recover. It is possible that weapons of mass destruction are detonated near simultaneously, creating a far more chaotic, unharmonious global civilization for years or decades.

All of these, and other highly undesirable outcomes, are exceptionally unlikely, so long as we are imagining and working toward a 2127 we collectively prefer.

I’m naturally optimistic but I’d prefer to be described as a possibilist. Brilliant, beautiful, and preferable futures are possible.

Stick around to find out.

❧