A day in the life for the future consumer

I’ve made it to 4 am...

So much for tracking my every move and sending updates to Mum while she hikes Tanzania. The high band 5G cells there are supposed to be great, so she’d have no problem tuning in, but the robot’s still asleep. The question now is a binary one: breakfast or workout?

After falling down the Twitter rabbit hole for a half-hour, my trusty wellness ecosystem tells me exercise would be the better way to go, and funnily enough, it also says I should be sleeping right now to optimise my cognitive performance. My sleep tracker and smartwatch are in cahoots, and it has been easier to keep my diet on track since I’ve been seeing the direct relationship between what goes in my gob and how my heart and brain are functioning. The electrocardiogram top I got for my birthday is still a bit uncomfortable, but they say the sensors mold to your body the more you wear it. OK subscription service fitness machinery, let’s do this!

Swish, swish! Whooo, feeling like a million dollars and ready to nail this lunch meeting. I couldn’t find out much as she seems to be a pretty fervent user of one of those personal data ownership platforms and has revoked everything. She chose the spot: they only use Samsung robot chef-arms, and the menu changes hourly to optimise what’s in the fridge and reduce waste to near-zero. Sounds amazing, I just hope the cricket burger is still on by the time we get past the small talk. Who doesn’t love that crunch though?

How is it already past 3 pm?

We hit it off, to say the least, which is great news because if she’s willing to subsidise my volumetric capture and avatar creation, that’s one less cost for me to get signed off.

Next task: make-up needs to happen for tonight. As my face slides into view on the 8K screen, my tiredness becomes painfully apparent. Thankfully once facial authentication syncs with everything I have back in my bathroom cabinet, I get topped up on under-eye concealer in the mirror and give myself less of a fright. It turns out I only need to buy three products to complement my already bulging make-up bag, so I authorise the payment with a retinal scan and thank the heavens for 20-minute delivery.

I love riding Uber-Copter home. Always so smooth. Eyes slipping, a micro nap may or may not have occurred.

Deirdre activated!

Well, that’s not a notification I love to see in my sunglasses, but at least I’m almost home. The drone comes shooting down the stairs, swooping between rooms to man the fort whilst I’m gone. It’s been great having Deidre around to keep an eye on things. The only real issue we’ve had is the odd clash with the vacuum when it knocks into furniture causing vibrations that wake Deidre. Yikes! I’m late. It’s time to don my white dress and heels; I can activate my accessories en route.

When I touchdown outside the theatre, the GPS-activated jewels grow on the augmented experience platform all guests were mandated to use tonight. Every hour that passes turns my face-jewels and hair crystals a new shimmering shade, reflecting the mood, music, and average heart rate of the crowd. Elaborate scales of gold and silver occlude my face, a digital mask in plain sight, and we’re swooning, swaying from left to right and back again. A simple fingerprint scan and my jewels melt away, indulging me in a rare organics-vs-digitals moment as I slip through the champagne crowd and out into the night.

It’s 23:52...

I’m under my goat-silk 'down'. They laughed when I bought it, but the synthetic biology was sound, and expressing spider silk proteins in an animal hundreds-of-times bigger just makes good manufacturing sense. And I’ve unplugged the jet lag lamp. Because as useful as all the tech is, it’s only as good as its value to me. And right now, I value sleep.

Gracie Page is director of emerging technologies VMLY&R.