Reflections on 2060 Life
Living Intentionally in the World After the Collapse
We answered the question of growth; now we live the question of purpose, in a world shaped by choice, contribution, and care.
It is a quiet morning in 2060.
I stand on my terrace, watching the soft glow of the horizon as the city-node wakes. The hum of drones delivering supplies and the low murmur of distant voices in shared work hubs weave into the soft click of my devices calibrating for what’s ahead. I sip a warm infusion, blended by my health AI to steady my system. I feel good. I breathe in, breathe out, and welcome whatever unfolds.
As part of my morning ritual, I step into my slick, skin-like overall — Nexaskin — a second skin woven with sensors and micro-actuators. It has grown with me over the years, adapting in ways that feel almost intimate. Mine was custom-made, shaped for my body at a time when this technology was still rare. Today, every baby receives one at birth. I’m still amazed, just as I was on day one, by how Nexaskin sends microscopic devices through my dermal layers to my inner world, quietly mapping hormones, blood chemistry, and cellular markers in real time. The same suit opens the door to the Alternate — the layered reality we shaped together, a space for deeper interaction, shared imagination, and collective design. As I move through the day, Nexaskin moves with me: adjusting its texture to keep me steady, casting soft patterns of light in shared spaces, and tuning my senses as I pass between the physical, the digital, and the imagined. The fabric hums at my skin, syncing gently with the worlds I’ll inhabit, as if it, too, remembers the path I’ve walked.
I’m seventy now, long post-menopausal, and I carry this stage of life with a sense of ease my female ancestors could hardly imagine. Perimenopause was once a lonely ordeal, endured in silence and misunderstood by medicine. Today, we honour it as a quiet milestone in the graceful maturation of women — a moment we gather to mark as the Year of Quiet Bloom — and I like to think I had a small hand in that shift. Technology helped me through it: real-time hormone monitoring with internal sensors, AI-guided treatment plans shaped to my needs, and community networks where we shared what truly worked. These tools soothed the symptoms, returned knowledge to us, and protected me from many of the diseases that so often followed declining hormones — support that earlier generations never knew. That chapter taught me what it means to navigate uncertainty with care, and I carried that lesson into the transformations that followed.
The shape of work and life
The world around me is far from the one I grew up in. I think back to 2038, when the old corporate giants collapsed one after another. First the bloated banks, which missed their only chance at a sustainable role — offering a trusted digital wallet on the blockchain. Then the tech titans, brought down by their own overreaching algorithms, and finally the multinationals that couldn’t pivot fast enough. We called it the Great Collapse, though in truth it felt like the opening of a gate. On the other side was a world ready to be rebuilt — smaller, more agile, shaped by people rather than institutions.
Since then, I’ve worked alongside the new builders — the creator circles, the micro-guilds, the coalitions of minds that now shape the world. Each of us carries our institution with us: our reputations, tools, and contracts move with us, untethered from any single employer. Employment fractured into pieces, and the organisations that clung to rigid structures found themselves under growing pressure. The 9-5 no longer exists. Everyone owns their time, and work has become fluid. I can’t recall when I last thought of something as work. Everything blends now — creation, contribution, rest — a single rhythm we call life. The corporations that survived became quiet providers of infrastructure: open protocols, shared compute, trusted networks. I’m proud to have played a part in guiding that shift, helping those companies shed their old skins and find new ways to serve.
The population kept shrinking, shaped by intention rather than hardship. My friends and I often laugh when we remember the crazy time when people had to pay for daycare — something as basic now as a blockchain account or electricity. Part of the Great Collapse came from people simply getting fed up with lives that left no room for themselves. I remember how existence revolved around work, childrearing, and the scraps of time left over, with little space to truly live. We should have called it the Great Burnout. More people chose to rewrite the script, building lives anchored in meaning rather than driven by the old compulsion to expand at any cost. There is no single script today. Birth rates settled at levels we once saw in the first decades of intentional parenthood, when choice shaped family size more than survival needs. With fewer people, we formed deeper connections, took greater care, and focused on what truly matters. People seem content these days. Even Reddit feels quieter these days, with fewer grievances and more shared experiments, reflections, and ideas.
Life flows at a pace that reflects what we value: contribution, presence, and purpose. One thing continues to trouble me: governments control reproduction through parenting certificates. Everyone receives a neuro-chain implant at birth, woven into their reproductive system, and it stays locked until a certificate is granted — proof that parents have earned the right to raise the next generation. Only with the certificate do parents receive every form of support needed to raise a child. I see the intent, a system designed to ensure care for every child, but I can’t help feeling we went too far. Every world shaped by freedom seems to carry its layer of control.
Evening and reflection
By midday, I walk to the local hub — a digital commons, something between an office and a co-working space, alive with purpose. Nexaskin subtly shifts as I move through these spaces: filtering background noise in the physical world, sharpening resolution in the Alternate, and gently signalling my availability through soft pulses of light along my arms. Walls display live feeds of people presenting projects, testing ideas, seeking collaborators. My AI assistant listens in, guiding me toward conversations where my skills might unlock something new. We move fluidly between roles: builder, mentor, student, critic. The tools we use — simulation sandboxes, generative engines, autonomous negotiation systems — are open, co-owned, and ever-evolving. Technology amplifies what we create together. I think back to the Collapse, to how frightening that liminal time felt. And this is what grew from it: coherence, shared purpose, and new possibility.
Evening brings its familiar ritual. Around a shared table, we eat — simple, good food from community kitchens, paid for in digital assets, favours, and mutual support. Someone pours high-quality tequila, distilled in small solar-powered batches, and we pass around glasses of synth-fruit infusions and adaptogen tonics that shift subtly with each sip, tuned to our biometrics. We talk about what we’re building, what broke, what might catch fire next. The old debates about scale feel like relics of another world. What we value is contribution, coherence, and the freedom to shape our days. There are tensions, as in any world, but they are ours to work through, shared rather than imposed. This world, with all its imperfections, belongs to us.
And as night deepens, I stand again on my terrace, looking out over the quiet city-node. I watch the community towers where those who seek the closeness of shared living have made their homes. I chose a different path — to live solo, together with my life partner, who will soon return from the Alternate. We have plans for tonight — we’re going dancing in the Gravity Lounge, where the floor shifts weight and rhythm beneath your feet, and the music wraps around you like air. The same stars watch over me as they did in my youth, with a world beneath them transformed. My dashboard glows softly at my side — a record of what I’ve given, what I’ve made, what I’ve stood for. I gently undress from Nexaskin, feeling the cool air against my skin as the suit folds itself into its resting form. I think of what comes next: not the scarcity we once feared, but the weight of abundance — the flood of human creativity, possibility, and choice that now shapes our days.
The pendulum seems to be swinging back toward automation and simplicity, as more of us seek refuge from the endless branching of paths, the quiet anxiety that can rise in a world of infinite options. I think of Oren Xai, the philosopher of the 2050s, who tried to guide us through this age of overchoice — reminding us that richness without rhythm can drown the spirit. We answered the question of growth; now we live inside the question of purpose. And I smile — barefoot on the cool floor, just as I was this morning — with the quiet certainty that this was always worth imagining.
ADRIANA
Nexaskin and the Alternate weren’t my ideas. They’re my boyfriend’s dream — a second skin that connects us to ourselves and the worlds we create. He’d be so disappointed if they never came to be.