Short stories from the year 2050
Jörg Eugster, the «Ambassador of the Future,» looks ahead to the future for m&k and explores the themes of “Communication and Life in the Metaverse” in his latest short story.
Lena is visiting her grandpa at home. She wants to ask him about the ways people used to communicate, because she's supposed to give a presentation on the topic in the metaverse.
«Hey, Grandpa, what was it like back then? Did people actually talk face to face?» Lena asks. – «Yes, that was completely normal. People really sat across from each other, just like I’m doing with you right now,» Grandpa smiles and continues right away. «Sometimes people also talked on the phone and wrote letters. Hey, Lena, I’d actually rather learn more about how you guys communicate first. Don’t you talk to each other anymore?» – «Oh, sure, Grandpa, but we prefer to communicate in virtual worlds and parallel universes like the Metaverse. That way, we can go for a walk together with our friends on a deserted beach. It’s all purely virtual, of course. The beach doesn’t actually exist in reality. We create our own virtual worlds.»
«That seems a little unreal to me. I’m still convinced that no virtual world can replace the quality of personal contact. »Hmm, is it really that nice to take a purely virtual walk on a fictional beach?« Grandpa asks. – »Oh, Grandpa, we’re just used to that these days. But please tell us what it was like back then. It can’t be that you guys just talked or talked on the phone.”
«Well, in the early days of digitalization, social media followed the telephone and email. We started posting, sharing, and commenting on Facebook. Later came photo-sharing platforms like Instagram and instant messaging services like WhatsApp,» Grandpa replies. – «Hmm, that really sounds very old-fashioned, Grandpa. These days, we only move around in parallel universes and communicate almost exclusively in these virtual spaces. I think it’s totally normal to be able to chat with my friends like this. We’re not used to anything else. My friends are often far away, but we can still have a good time together,» says Lena. – «Yes, I know, Lena. What’s normal is always what you experienced or went through in your own youth. There’s a world of difference between how we communicated back then and how we do it today,» muses Grandpa. «Maybe I’ll get used to it yet—who knows?»
Jörg Eugster is «The Future Ambassador®.» Here, he regularly reports from the year 2050 on how technologies and ways of life have evolved.
