Welcome to the year 2030. Welcome to my city - or should I say, "our city". I don't own anything. I don't own a car. I don't own a house. I don't own any appliances or any clothes.
It might seem odd to you, but it makes perfect sense for us in this city. Everything you considered a product, has now become a service. We have access to transportation, accommodation, food and all the things we need in our daily lives. One by one all these things became free, so it ended up not making sense for us to own much.
In other words, you don't possess anything that you have a personal attachment to. Everything belongs to everyone, and all of it belongs to the State who partitions it out as it deems necessary.
First communication became digitized and free to everyone.
Because it's been either been completely subsidized to the corporations who have everyone's data and can track their every movement and predict their every action, or it's been privatized by the government who can do the same. Got it.
Then, when clean energy became free, things started to move quickly.
Who covers operational costs? Who covers the cost of maintenance and compensation - or out-and-out replacement of material when it breaks down? Or is that simply re-labeled as something else and passed on to the individual that way?
Transportation dropped dramatically in price. It made no sense for us to own cars anymore, because we could call a driverless vehicle or a flying car for longer journeys within minutes.
They actually went with "flying car" - just think about how idealistic these people have to be. More to the point, however, think of just how centralized everyone would need to be to call an autonomous vehicle "within minutes", without any supposed time delay. Think of the partitioning issue above - and how often a person might expect to see a "you have exceeded your transportation limit" message.
We started transporting ourselves in a much more organized and coordinated way when public transport became easier, quicker and more convenient than the car. Now I can hardly believe that we accepted congestion and traffic jams, not to mention the air pollution from combustion engines. What were we thinking?
"Easier, quicker, and more convenient" is simple to reach when you make the alternative harder, slower, and more inconvenient - just saying.
Sometimes I use my bike when I go to see some of my friends. I enjoy the exercise and the ride. It kind of gets the soul to come along on the journey. Funny how some things seem never seem to lose their excitement: walking, biking, cooking, drawing and growing plants. It makes perfect sense and reminds us of how our culture emerged out of a close relationship with nature.
It's a good thing people are so homogeneous that they can be made to conform to a certain lifestyle, isn't it?
In our city we don't pay any rent, because someone else is using our free space whenever we do not need it. My living room is used for business meetings when I am not there.
Oh, ok - so everything is owned by one organization which also controls the utilities and determines what individual space is used for. I wonder how often you find yourself "going to see some of your friends", whether you planned to or not?
Once in awhile, I will choose to cook for myself. It is easy - the necessary kitchen equipment is delivered at my door within minutes. Since transport became free, we stopped having all those things stuffed into our home. Why keep a pasta-maker and a crepe cooker crammed into our cupboards? We can just order them when we need them.
Assuming those items are in stock, assuming they haven't been damaged by the last person to use them (oh yeah, how are damages assessed, anyway?), assuming there isn't a transportation breakdown, assuming you haven't exceeded your allotment for that period...
This also made the breakthrough of the circular economy easier. When products are turned into services, no one has an interest in things with a short life span. Everything is designed for durability, repairability and recyclability.
"A
circular economy, as defined in the Save Our Seas 2.0 Act, refers to an economy that uses a systems-focused approach and involves industrial processes and economic activities that are restorative or regenerative by design, enable resources used in such processes and activities to maintain their highest value for as long as possible, and aim for the elimination of waste through the superior design of materials, products, and systems (including business models). It is a change to the model in which resources are mined, made into products, and then become waste. A circular economy reduces material use, redesigns materials to be less resource intensive, and recaptures “waste” as a resource to manufacture new materials and products."
So, can you provide any concrete examples?
The materials are flowing more quickly in our economy and can be transformed to new products pretty easily. Environmental problems seem far away, since we only use clean energy and clean production methods. The air is clean, the water is clean and nobody would dare to touch the protected areas of nature because they constitute such value to our well being. In the cities we have plenty of green space and plants and trees all over. I still do not understand why in the past we filled all free spots in the city with concrete.
No, I guess not - just pie-in-the-sky speculation.
Shopping? I can't really remember what that is. For most of us, it has been turned into choosing things to use. Sometimes I find this fun, and sometimes I just want the algorithm to do it for me. It knows my taste better than I do by now.
So, the concept of "shopping" has been phased out - the ability to idly speculate what one may or may not want, based on short or long term needs or desires? It's just choosing from a list of things that can be "used" and then disposed of - just like the individual. Or, just shorten the process and let the algorithm determine for you - it already does for so much else in your life!
When AI and robots took over so much of our work, we suddenly had time to eat well, sleep well and spend time with other people. The concept of rush hour makes no sense anymore, since the work that we do can be done at any time. It is more like thinking-time, creation-time and development-time.
This is pure futurism talking - "time to do (x)" is a nebulous term in itself, because it can vary based on the individual. "Rush hour" is simply meant to designate a period where groups of workers are moving from one place to another - the work we do that can be "done at any time" sounds like it could also be done by
anybody, meaning that the value of the individual worker for their ability is actually pretty low.
For a while, everything was turned into entertainment and people did not want to bother themselves with difficult issues. It was only at the last minute that we found out how to use all these new technologies for better purposes than just killing time.
How fortunate it was found out "at the last minute" - say, without all those worthless individuals who were just taking up space and not contributing enough of value?
My biggest concern is all the people who do not live in our city. Those we lost on the way. Those who decided that it became too much, all this technology. Those who felt obsolete and useless when robots and AI took over big parts of our jobs. Those who got upset with the political system and turned against it. They live different kind of lives outside of the city. Some have formed little self-supplying communities. Others just stayed in the empty and abandoned houses in small 19th century villages.
That's all the commentary these people get - an afterthought.
Once in awhile I get annoyed about the fact that I have no real privacy. No where I can go and not be registered. I know that, somewhere, everything I do, think and dream of is recorded. I just hope that nobody will use it against me.
Look, citizen - just take your soma and follow the instructions given by your superiors and go visit your little friends on your bicycle and choose the things you want to use and worry about the people who do not live in your city and
own nothing and be happy.
All in all, it is a good life. Much better than the path we were on, where it became so clear that we could not continue with the same model of growth. We had all these terrible things happening: lifestyle diseases, climate change, the refugee crisis, environmental degradation, completely congested cities, water pollution, air pollution, social unrest and unemployment. We lost way too many people before we realised that we could do things differently.'
"The same model of growth" just really says it all, doesn't it. This is not a lifestyle written by humans, for humans.
Written by:
Ida Auken, Member of Parliament, Parliament of Denmark (Folketinget)
The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum.
Sure, it's just an opinion piece. But wouldn't it be so much nicer if it were actually real?
