Anno 2030

published August 2025

I was first exposed to Ray Kurzweil’s ideas about the future in the book The Singularity is Near in 2007.  The general thesis seemed correct, but the actual predictions that came out of that thesis seemed too mind boggling to take seriously. It was obvious that the exponential nature of technological progress would alter the trajectory of humanity in my lifetime, but the speed at which this would take place did not seem so obvious. I was dealing with significant health challenges at the time and this promise of a healthy future made me become somewhat obsessed with Kurzweil's ideas. They ended up having a major impact on how I thought about the world.

People were dismissive that Kurzweil's ideas would ever becoming a reality when the book was first published in 2005. Now the only question is when, not if.

That same year, Steve Jobs launched the iPhone. It was not just the next generation phone, it ended up being a cultural and technological paradigm shift.  It fundamentally rewired how people communicate, access information, and live. 

Despite the Iphone launch at the time, it was still not apparent that technological progress was moving at hyper speed. In fact, I would argue that it wasn't until Sam Altman and OpenAI released GPT 3.5 in November of 2022, that all of a sudden Kurzweil's ideas did not seem so far fetched anymore.

Now, technologies even more disruptive are just over the horizon. The world of 2030 looks very different than the world of 2025.

The first part of this article will describe the three coming technologies that will reshape human life within the next 5-10 years.

The second part of this article will dive into big picture implications of this fantastical future and the forces that might derail it.

Smartphones reached 25% U.S. penetration 5 years after the iPhone’s 2007 launch.  By 2030, the three following technologies will crash through the 25% adoption threshold in the US, not as individual novelties, but as new platforms that will reshape daily life. 

As you read the following, I urge you not to make judgments about whether this is ‘good’ or not. As the famous Thomas Sowell quote goes, "There are no solutions, only trade-offs." Each technology listed below holds great potential to improve human life but, just like the smartphone, will also introduce new negative externalities.

Waymo has already become a normal site to see in LA. Tesla FSD will be mainstream next year. It's just a matter of time before almost all cities in the US become majority driverless vehicles.

Driverless cars: The car parked outside is a 20th-century relic: it sits idle 95% of the time, hogs valuable land, and erodes urban centers. Within cities, the logic of solo car ownership will collapse. Fleets of autonomous vehicles will relentlessly circulate, releasing parking lots for development. Solves almost every transportation issue you can imagine, and opens up cities in a way you can’t currently imagine. Those are just the economic and convenience implications. The safety implications are even more significant.

In the future, the fact that humans directly controlled super heavy metal objects that weighed thousands of pounds at super high rates of speed around and at each other will seem crazy. In 2023, approximately 40,901 people died in motor vehicle crashes in the United States. That's more than 2x the amount of gun homicide victims that same year.

Fully autonomous vehicles will reduce that number by more than 99%.

Smart eyewear: A few weeks ago on a sunny rooftop in LA, I was speaking with someone when I noticed her sun glasses were actually the Rayban / Meta smart glasses. I asked her what she thought of them and she said she had just come from her son's basketball game and it was the first time she caught her son actually making a basket on camera. Smart eyewear will replace your phone and you will effectively be recording everything you see (as much as privacy laws allow)*. 

Imagine the phone dissolving into invisible infrastructure. Mass-market, AI-powered glasses will not just show data; they will see with you, unlocking robust AR capabilities. You’ll remember every name and face, capture every conversation (within privacy limits), and summon a personal AI assistant at a glance. You can replay highlights of your week, day, or year. Everything will be captured, and it won’t feel intrusive because you won’t have to hold a device up to your face to do so. This will be the main way you interact with AI on a daily basis, and along with your wristband / watch, will be your main health monitoring device. 

Smart eyewear will first seem like an intrusion, until it become ubiquitous. The smartphone era definitively ends at the end of this decade.

Personal Robots: This is the most game changing technology of all. Every task you don't want to do such as cooking, cleaning, even nuanced errands and certain child care tasks, will be handled by intelligent, personalized machines. The demographic impact is profound: as America’s population ages, robots will counterbalance the care gap while freeing the workforce for creative, social, and entrepreneurial pursuits. Your personal robot will replace your car as the most valuable asset you own other than your home.  It will also provide security for you and your family. And no more arguing with your partner / spouse about chores.  A version of personal robots will reach 25% adoption in cities in five years, but the more advanced robots that mimic all human physical abilities will likely take longer.

"Hey Alexa, can you whip me up a Mediterranean salad. And go ahead and make some pan seared lamb chops while you are at it. If you can make my kitchen spotless after you are done as well."

Each of these shifts is inevitable. The only debate is on the timeline. Rapid cost declines, maturing AI, and industry-wide investment will converge. Even the potential bottlenecks, like energy, will be solved.  We have an unlimited energy fusion reactor in the sky and next generation nuclear fission reactors will be a reality. 

We don’t have to endorse ubiquitous video recording or robot nannies to recognize how profoundly these advances will rewire the mechanics of life. History suggests that technologies which feel intrusive or overwhelming at first end up feeling indispensable. By 2030, not choosing to participate in these platforms may seem as unthinkable as not having a smartphone today.

This isn’t a moral argument. It’s the trajectory of technological progress. Unlike previous waves, these technologies will alter not just personal habits, but the architecture of attention, memory, transportation, and what it means to be human. 

The real question is, what will humans do next? When technology reshapes everything, our focus will pull into three timeless pursuits - connection, experiences, and creation. 

These aren’t separate lanes, they fuel each other. We’ll create starry worlds beyond imagination, forge bonds deeper than ever before with others, and curate experiences that expand the very limits of what it means to live (in fact, we might be in one of those experiences currently).

Right now, we’re standing at a crossroads in human history. Artificial intelligence isn’t just another invention, it’s the most transformative force we’ve ever encountered.

Over the next decade, humanity has the opportunity to transcend. While I believe the above technological changes will happen, the timeline can be derailed by human psychology. There are two radically different future paths ahead of us.

One is a Mad Max scenario: chaos born from political strife, scarcity (real and perceived), and civil unrest.

The other is Star Trek: A world where technology expands not only our reach into space but the depths of human potential and consciousness itself. Abundance is the norm. 

The light of human consciousness is precious. What humanity does in this moment will decide whether it will spread across the universe or if it will flicker and die out. 

Sirish Pulusani

*Footnote: As smart eyewear becomes widely adopted, people will also prioritize tech-free gatherings and connections. These devices will be common in everyday life, but you might choose not to wear them at home or during personal events. Some groups will reject this technology entirely, viewing it as a hijacking of human reality, and retreat to natural settings, like the Amish do today. Others will fully disappear into the metaverse, interacting minimally in real life.