But first, a letter from 2024
To the Sam of 2014.
Sam, I need to tell you something.
This Saturday you woke up the most ‘recovered’ man in the UK.
Yes, I know that sounds absurd. And it is.
Let me try and explain…
You see, I’m you, but in 2024.
A lot has happened. Certain global events will soon transpire which…
Well… I won’t spoil the surprise.
After all, that’s not why I’m here.
The real reason I’m here is because of a video you’ll watch in a few months time which will define a large part of the next decade for you.
This video will seem completely unremarkable to the version of you ten years from now. But to you, in 2014, it will feel revelatory.
Without sounding too intimidating, this video will fundamentally inform the basis of your PhD. It’ll lead you to present your work to a room of over 300 leading medical professionals at an international congress for a medical condition you know nowhere near enough about.
Then, it’ll go away. At least professionally.
You’ll stay just as obsessed by technology. But you’ll branch out into other areas, perhaps slightly disappointed that the future this video laid out didn’t appear to happen to the extent you thought it would.
Sam - here’s the thing. It actually did. And I’m not here to tell you about the impact it had on your professional life, I’m here to tell you about the impact it’s had on your life full-stop.
This mythical video…
Shall I just cut to the chase and tell you what it is?
In fact, why don’t I show you. Let’s not worry too much about chaos theory and the butterfly effect - what harm can giving you a preview 4 months early really do?
The video is a TV advertisement for the Apple iPhone 5S. But it’s not really about the iPhone 5S at all. Instead, it’s a glimpse into the future of health…
You see, later this year Apple is going to do a special announcement about something called Apple Health. It will be a vision for how smartphones will help us all to keep track of our personal health and fitness.
But, here’s the thing - I’m not here to tell you how Apple Health has changed your life 10 years on. In fact, I can’t even tell you the last time you opened Apple Health…
No, what I’m here to tell you about is how much data has played a part across the next decade of your life.
If memory serves, right about now, in 2014, you’re wearing your Fitbit Flex and getting 10,000 steps a day. If you haven’t already, you’re about to find a section hidden deep within the Fitbit website where you can see a leaderboard of the amount of steps different people have taken over a week, for your area of the country. This will seem fairly insignificant at the time, but boy will it turn out to be a strong sign of things to come…
This is new tech, so there’ll only be about 20 of you. But the competition will be fierce.
An elderly-looking woman called Gail will regularly put down an absurd amount of steps - easily 20,000 per day.
Sam…this will drive you insane.
There will be a time in the summer where you will run further than you’ve ever ran before, in searing heat, just to beat Gail for the weekly title. You’ll spend that afternoon collapsed in a heap on your sofa, staring at your laptop screen, watching the leaderboard, saying absurd things to yourself like “IS THAT ALL YOU’VE GOT GAIL?? IS THAT ALL YOU’VE GOT??”.
I’m dismayed to say she will be living rent-free in your head for a solid year. And Sam, even worse is the fact that will this will only be the beginning…
I think it’s about time to go back to that original thing I told you at the start of this letter. The fact that this Saturday you woke up the most ‘recovered’ man in the UK.
You see, that Fitbit you’re wearing on your wrist is now something called a Whoop. And this doesn’t even track your steps - instead it tracks your sleep, it tracks something called your heart-rate variability (which you’ll spend way too much time obsessing over), and your daily strain; which is a measure of how much effort and exercise you’ve put in that day.
This Saturday, according to Whoop’s leaderboard, you had the best recovery score of anyone in the UK (ok, in reality, a subset of the UK - actually, less than 3000 people)
Why is that even a thing?!
Well it turns out that what much of this decade has actually been about is data, the gamifying of data, and the power of social comparison.
And if you haven’t figured this out yet, I’m afraid to tell you you’re going to be an absolute sucker for it…
Here are some other things that data and social competition will make you do:
You’ll spend an entire month running around a small park in Wandsworth in a repetitive and mundane circle, just to get something called a ‘Local Legend’ status on Strava.
You’ll get a 650 day streak (and counting) on a language app called Duolingo which you’re not even sure works, but you’re guilt-tripped daily by a cartoon owl to keep going.
You’ll spend too much time wondering about what something called your Spotify Wrapped will consist of this year, whilst simultaneously not caring one bit about what anyone else’s looks like.
But it’s not all pointless. This data will also help you achieve some incredible things - things you never ever saw yourself doing in a million years. You’ll run the London Marathon twice, you’ll even run an Ultramarathon. And your obsession with tech and your willingness to throw yourself into it will ultimately be one of your greatest assets when it comes to understanding why it works, and the mechanisms behind it all - all of which will do wonders for your career in UX.
The reason I’m writing to you today Sam is because none of this stuff was obvious ten years ago. How we now use data, and the ways we use it to influence and change behaviour, are all far more vast and wide-reaching that you would originally expect.
What something looks like today, is rarely how it actually transpires.
And funnily enough, one of the reasons the Sam of 2024 is writing this letter to you in the first place is because he feels like he’s just had a similar moment.
I can’t show you this video for fear it’ll break your 2014 brain in two, but a YouTuber called Casey Neistat (yes, that guy from the bike lanes video) just put out a video trying Apple’s latest product - the Apple Vision Pro.
This video, while funny in nature, actually pointed to some very profound implications for what the next ten years of tech might look like. This time, less about data, and more about spatial computing.
Here’s hoping the Sam of 2034 might reach out to tell him how it all worked out…
P.S.
You know that dissertation you wrote in 2011 on the psychology of human-ai relations? Yeah, here in 2024 that might be about to come in pretty handy…
‘Letters from 2034’ will be a thought-experiment where I try to imagine what the impact of todays technology will be ten years from now. I will do this through a series of letters written to myself, from the year 2034. If this type of insanity sounds like your kind of thing, please do feel free to subscribe below.
Hello, desperate to know what is going to happen. Please can we have an update