What if the future made us simpler?

I think we might find a device that slows or even stops bacterial growth in food. If such a process could preserve food without making it unsafe, the refrigerator might become an object of the past. Instead of just cooling things down, we would act directly on what causes food to deteriorate.

I think future generations might envy our full supermarkets and the amount of choice we had. For many people today, the main limit is money. In the future I imagine, another limit will be what nature can still produce.

We might no longer be able to eat whatever we want whenever we want. Wasting tonnes of food and using drinking water without thinking could seem incomprehensible to those who come after us. This abundance is already distributed very unevenly; I fear it will become rarer still.

If global warming and rising sea levels continue, I imagine artificial cities built on water, or even beneath it. We might move some of our homes rather than being able to protect every piece of land we occupy today. It would be a way to adapt to a world we helped transform.

I fear a future with far fewer animals and much less biological diversity. Activities that depend on their presence could disappear because we have destroyed their habitats. Nature will not always be able to compensate for what humanity takes away.

For species we depend on, such as bees, we might build systems that perform some of their functions. I see that as a loss: replacing a function would not bring back a species or the world it lived in.

I think birth might one day take place entirely inside devices, from conception through a child's development. Future parents might follow the process remotely. This would change our relationship with pregnancy, parenthood and the act of bringing a life into the world.

If we find a way to speed up human cell development dramatically, I imagine that some people will try to create adults directly. They might be prepared for a particular task, without memories of a childhood they never experienced.

This raises many questions for me. Would a person without a past have the same freedom to choose a life? Who would decide their purpose? Being able to manufacture an organism would not, in my view, give anyone the right to treat a person as a tool.

If we cannot find new resources on other planets, some materials needed for robots might become hard to obtain. I think we might then turn more often to living organisms.

We would alter their DNA to give them functions suited to our needs. Their material could later return to a biological cycle. I imagine a kind of natural recycling, along with all the questions it would raise about the beings we create.

I think we will find ways to live longer by slowing ageing. Some diseases might be prevented earlier, perhaps at conception, through changes to DNA. I do not know how far this will be possible, but I imagine that our idea of a normal lifespan will change considerably.

Our current body is fragile. Diseases, injuries, tendinitis and even the way certain joints work make me think there is a lot of room for change.

If we keep a human form, I think its inner workings could become much simpler. We might have fewer organs or different systems altogether. In a very distant future, we might even do without eating, drinking, sleeping or going to the toilet. I know this idea goes far beyond anything we can do today.

I tend to think that what makes us a person lies mainly in our brain and consciousness. If we can ever transfer that consciousness, changing bodies might become possible.

One question keeps bothering me: would it still be me, or a copy convinced that it was me? I can imagine the transfer, but I have no answer to that question of identity.

I think we will own fewer things permanently. Clothes, homes and even the use of land might be granted for limited periods. We would borrow what we need and then return it.

This could reduce some forms of waste. It could also make us very dependent on whoever controls access to objects and places. Much would depend on who sets the rules.

I think human soldiers could be replaced by drones or other systems that operate remotely. Some police work might follow the same direction.

The power of these machines worries me as much as their potential precision interests me. The further we separate a person from the consequences of a decision, the more I wonder what will stop them from using that power.

I imagine many medical tasks being taken over by systems with access to more knowledge than a human and the ability to perform very precise movements. There might be fewer doctors, and their role could change completely.

In my most radical version of this future, humans would no longer deliver medical care. That would still leave questions of trust, responsibility and the need to be listened to.

I think phones and computers will eventually seem as distant from everyday life as some old tools do today. Information will be integrated into our vision, or directly into our brains.

We might control tools through thought. They could even anticipate what we want before we have time to formulate the intention. That convenience would also raise the question of what could still remain private.

I imagine a future in which today's languages are mainly preserved in archives. We might use a common language, then no longer need to speak at all: communication would happen directly through thought.

I wonder what we would lose along with our languages. A way of saying something also carries a history and a way of seeing it. Transmitting an idea faster would not guarantee that we understood it better.

I think we will eventually move through space using something other than fuel-based systems. I imagine an ability to control gravity that would let us draw inspiration from the movement of planets.

I do not have a precise mechanism to propose. This is an intuition about the direction a discovery might take, not a claim that such propulsion is possible.

I find it difficult to imagine teleporting a human body because of its complexity. If teleportation ever became possible in the sense used in fiction, I think we would first need to simplify our form of life.

This connects with my idea of a less complicated body. But I have the same question as with a transfer of consciousness: would moving a person and reconstructing a copy of them be the same thing?

If we discover other forms of life, I fear that a new kind of racism or hierarchy might emerge. If we consider them less intelligent or less powerful, we might try to colonise them.

Their planet could then suffer what ours has suffered. Travelling further into the universe would not mean that we had learned from our mistakes. I would like to believe otherwise, but I do not see why technical progress alone would make us wiser.

I see the current evolution involving artificial intelligence as a possible continuation of the evolution of life. It therefore seems plausible to me that we might change our appearance, or that humanity as we know it could disappear in favour of something else.

It might no longer be human life. We would have kept evolving until we no longer recognised ourselves in the body that seems so obvious to us today.

Sometimes I wonder whether we might eventually become something very small, perhaps as small as an atom. I use that image to think about a simpler existence; I am not claiming that an atom has consciousness.

Life started from simple things and became extraordinarily complex. Perhaps, after travelling that path, it will return towards a minimal form. When I look at the universe, I wonder whether our need to complicate everything is only a temporary stage.

Sooner or later, I think we will ask what we are trying to do with our existence. Working, eating, drinking, thinking, feeling, owning, sometimes killing or destroying: why have we organised life around so many needs and conflicts?

Even when we do good, part of our actions can still be tied to ego. We might eventually decide that we have become unnecessarily complex. A simpler form of life could then seem preferable.