Happy birthday, baby. You have been born into an era of intelligent machines. They have watched over you almost since your conception.
They let your parents listen in on your tiny heartbeat, track your gestation on an app, and post your sonogram on social media. Well before you were born, you were known to the algorithm. Your arrival coincided with the of this magazine.
With a bit of luck and the right genes, you might see the next 125 years. How will you and the next generation of machines grow up together? We asked more than a dozen experts to imagine your joint future. We explained that this would be a thought experiment.
What I mean is: We asked them to get weird. Just about all of them agreed on how to frame the past: Computing shrank from giant shared industrial mainframes to personal desktop devices to electronic shrapnel so small it’s ambient in the environment. Previously controlled at arm’s length through punch card, keyboard, or mouse, computing became wearable, moving onto—and very recently into—the body.
In our time, eye or brain implants are only for medical aid; in your time, who knows? In the future, everyone thinks, computers will get smaller and more plentiful still. But the biggest change in your lifetime will be the rise of intelligent agents. Computing will be more responsive, more intimate, less confined to any one platform.
It will be less like a tool, and more like a companion. It will learn from you and also be your guide. What they mean, baby.