Further Reading / Resources
The reality I am describing is an obviously optimistic view of the future. There are many scenarios that could take place, including the end of all human existence. Here are some books if you want to learn more:
April 6, 2026 · 12 min read
You may feel a strong psychological reaction to what you're about to read. Some of you will love it, others will think it's absurd.
That's perfectly fine. Just for a moment, try loosening the grip of judgment. Read with curiosity instead of defense, as an experiment in open-mindedness.
This is not about politics or current world events, it is about the technological future of humanity. We are about to go through an inflection point: the most significant change in the history of the species. It will redefine every aspect of human life.
I first picked up The Singularity Is Near in 2007. I then consumed everything Ray Kurzweil put out for a decade. More than 99.9% of people I brought it up with thought it was an insane thesis, but I found it fascinating. I kept asking myself whether I was just indulging in techno-utopian fantasy or if there was real substance behind it. By 2014 I wasn't sure of the exact thesis, I just knew it was oriented in the right direction. Around the same time I told my family to invest in a few companies that were reshaping the technological landscape:
Being in medical school, I didn't have the capital to make moves back then. The investment would have grown by 1,788% or around 20x. Oh well. And SpaceX? It will IPO this year close to a $1.5 trillion valuation.
Some of what follows below will feel obvious. Some will feel like science fiction. Most of it is neither.
If the future I'm describing isn't to your liking, good news. You'll be able to opt out. The individual will have more freedom in this world, not less.
We stare down at glass rectangles all day. It's clunky. It's unnatural. It's almost over.
The phone in your pocket will be replaced by glasses on your face: thin, normal-looking, a hundred times more powerful. People couldn't imagine letting go of their Blackberries when the iPhone arrived. You probably can't imagine life without your phone right now. But by 2036, the smartphone as you know it will not exist.
Glasses won't be the only mainstream shift, as many people will not want to wear them most of the time. You'll be surrounded by ambient computing; technology woven into your environment, responding before you reach for anything. Non-invasive brain-computer interfaces will make interacting with technology feel as natural as thinking. You won't stare down at a screen. The screen will come to you.
We will become a "voice-first" species in all our technological interactions. Texting and typing as we know them will completely disappear.
Keyboards, touchscreens; all on their way out. Today's voice assistants are the worst they will ever be. Within a few years, the gap between AI voice and real human conversation will effectively disappear. You won't "input" data. You'll just live your life. Your technology will keep up.
Paradoxically, physical writing will make a big comeback (and whatever you write with a pen on any paper will be instantly digitally transcribed).
Traditional careers will end for most people.
What's replacing them is a highly efficient, skills-based, project-based economy. Learn something valuable, solve a specific problem, get paid, move on. The old idea of a "career": same company, same title, steady climb. That's going away for 90% of the workforce.
Only the top 10% of practitioners in fields like medicine, law, CS, and finance will be retained in a traditional sense. These "superhuman" professionals will be so heavily augmented by AI that one doctor will be able to do the work of 100. There is a future where if an actual human surgeon is the one operating on you, you would be horrified. AI augmented robots that can see and understand your physiology at a level incomprehensible to a human will be the ones doing the surgery, overseen by a high level medical professional.
Traditional schooling was torture for me. I was bored out of my mind. Sitting children in a classroom for eight hours a day was invented for the industrial age. That age is gone.
Medical school. Law school. Eight years of expensive, outdated training for a world that no longer exists. For 90% of people, it's the worst deal you can sign up for. The rare few who will actually redefine their fields, they should still go. Everyone else needs something different.
The shift is from just-in-case learning to just-in-time learning. Learn what you need, when you need it. Education will evolve into curiosity-driven, play-based exploration; a system that nurtures natural intelligence rather than medicating it. The freedom to learn through wonder, not pressure, is what's next.
Medicine has always been reactive. You feel bad. You see a doctor. The doctor guesses. That model is ending.
Wearables will track your blood chemistry, organ stress, and biomarkers in real time, around the clock. Your AI health coach will detect a cancer cell or a heart problem months before any doctor today could catch it. We will move from healthcare to health optimization, preventing the break from ever happening.
What we will eventually see:
I work in this field. I can see where it's going. And it's going there fast.
The robotics revolution changes the game entirely. It will become the most significant industry in the history of humanity. Every factory. Every warehouse. Fully automated, within years. But that's just the beginning.
Urban driving becomes fully autonomous. Humanoid robots, real ones, go mainstream. Every household eventually has one. Cooking, cleaning, maintenance. The daily grind, handled.
Here's a side effect nobody talks about: human birth rates go back up. When work stops consuming most of your waking hours, people have the time and energy to build families again.
Think Ready Player One. Think The Matrix.
Virtual reality will finally start to take its ultimate form. When virtual worlds become indistinguishable from the physical one, where you can be anyone, experience anything, build entire civilizations, many people will choose to stay there. We already see it in gaming today (hell, they were doing that decades ago when Everquest and World of Warcraft first came out). This is that, multiplied by 1000, with the fidelity of Westworld. That reality will be more than a decade away, but virtual reality in 10 years will be mind-blowing.
You won't play a game. You'll buy a life.
This will lead to a 'Trinity of Human Archetypes'
This divergence will split humanity into three distinct groups:
Those who opt out entirely. Analog lives, nature, no screens. Think the Amish.
Those who merge with technology. Neural links, AI augmentation, biological enhancement. Effectively superhuman.
Those who live primarily inside high-fidelity digital simulations. A chosen reality.
All three will coexist. It won't necessarily be three clear cut categories for everyone, there will be people on spectrums between all of them.
* I first read about this idea on X, I believe from IndianBronson
When AI and robots drive the cost of goods toward zero, the old deal breaks down. Work to survive. That's been the human bargain since the beginning of civilization. It's ending.
By the late 2030s, most developed nations will pay citizens some form of dividend. Food, shelter, healthcare, basic goods: covered. The bottom rungs of Maslow's hierarchy, handled.
The Marxist dream will finally come true, but catalyzed by capitalist driven innovation and technology.
If you want more than that, you'll still need to create value. Build and create things. Solve problems. Make art. Some people will always get paid. But survival will no longer be the reason they work. You will be working towards the apex of Maslow's hierarchy: Self-Actualization.
Energy is the major bottleneck to everything. Luckily, we have an effectively unlimited natural nuclear fusion reactor in the sky: the Sun.
Solar and battery storage costs have dropped by ~90% in the last decade. By 2035, renewable energy (primarily solar) will meet over 50% of total global energy demand—and up to 75% of global electricity—driven by the 'dematerialized' costs of solar and storage. Optimistic estimates have us meeting over 80% of global demand (barring catastrophic collapse of humanity due to civil unrest / war).
The "S-curve" of solar efficiency combined with breakthroughs in modular fusion and battery technology will bring the cost down dramatically, eventually approaching zero.
This abundance will power everything from the massive desalination plants needed to solve the global water crisis to the data centers needed to power the AI revolution.
We will start the transition from a Type 1 Kardashev civilization to Type 2.
In an abundance economy where robots do the work and AI does the thinking, what's left?
While humans in general don't want to do menial jobs and labor, work can be highly fulfilling for many, and there is a deep desire in most humans to do something productive. Most people will get tired of sitting around being entertained all day.
What's left are three things: Connection, Experiences, and Creating.
The most valuable things in the future will be real-world relationships and raw human creation. Service-based economies, technology-less parties, and "unplugged" nature retreats will be the ultimate luxury. Nature will be prized above all.
Experiences and forms of art that today seem unimaginable will soon emerge. Throughout history, technology has been the missing instrument that allows the artist to become fully realized. The piano had to exist before Beethoven could translate his vision into sound. The camera and projector had to exist before Kubrick or Spielberg could dream in motion. The synthesizer awaited Bowie; the computer awaited Jobs. The microphone, the white bejeweled glove, and the black Florsheim loafers had to exist before Michael Jackson could glide across the stage and unveil the first moonwalk — one of the greatest performances in music history. Their actualization relied on technological innovation. Now, digital technology is unlocking that same potential for billions. A coming wave of art and expression beyond anything we can yet comprehend.
The change is irreversible. We are moving at a runaway, breakneck speed toward a "Future Shock" (as Alvin Toffler called it) that the human brain isn't naturally wired to handle. He saw this coming fifty years ago.
We stand at a crossroads. One path leads to fracture: psychological unrest spiraling into conflict, a descent into chaos worthy of a Mad Max wasteland. The other demands maturity: that we recognize our shared humanity, resolve our divisions, and channel our collective brilliance toward something transcendent — harnessing the sun's power, moving heavy industry beyond Earth's borders, and transforming our planet into a thriving, protected green sanctuary.
The ultimate trajectory is clear: we will mine the asteroids, capture the sun's energy, and extend civilization across the solar system. Earth will stand as the original blue planet — protected, revered, and flourishing — while consciousness expands across the galaxy. Before this century ends, biological and artificial intelligence will merge, transforming us into beings as unrecognizable to our past selves as we are to early humans. New worlds. New experiences. New realities — a future straight out of Star Trek, but real.
"The meta-crisis is a generalized educational crisis in which, despite all the concrete problems faced by society, the most pressing problems are actually 'in our heads'—in our minds and souls."
"As technology is empowering our choices and we are getting something like the power of gods, you have to have something like the love and the wisdom of gods to wield that or you self-destruct."
— Daniel Schmachtenberger
Train your mind to handle change without breaking. The people who thrive in the next decade will be the ones who can look at a world they don't recognize, and stay calm enough to act.
I've found meditation to be the best tool for this. It lets you see reality as it is, not as you wish it were, not as you fear it might be. Just as it is. Handle the new. Keep moving.
The ultimate prediction, championed by Kurzweil, is the Singularity in 2045. This is not about when it will actually happen, that would be incredibly hard to pinpoint. It could be 2040, 2060, or 2100, who knows. But it will happen.
In physics, a singularity is the heart of a black hole, a point where matter is compressed into an infinitesimal space and gravity becomes so extreme that our known laws of physics can no longer describe it. Surrounding it is the event horizon, the ultimate point of no return: once something crosses that invisible boundary, not even light can escape.
A technological singularity is the point in time where technological acceleration has happened so rapidly that we cannot explain beyond that point using our current understanding of reality.
Both represent a horizon of knowledge: a wall we cannot look past using our current tools of understanding. It would be like an ant living in an ant world, trying to explain how humans live today.
This marks the end of human biological limitations and the beginning of a post-human era where intelligence saturates the universe. This is not the beginning of the end of history.
It is the end of the beginning.
This isn't just the ride of a lifetime. It's potentially the most significant moment in the history of humanity.
How are you preparing for this change?
Have thoughts / criticism / want to discuss this thesis? Do it on Hacker News here!
You can also keep an eye on medsiri.com, which I first created way back in 2017. The website hasn't changed since then, but a full scale update centered around optimizing human health and wellbeing will be coming soon.
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The reality I am describing is an obviously optimistic view of the future. There are many scenarios that could take place, including the end of all human existence. Here are some books if you want to learn more:
