Looking back from 2040

Around the middle of the 2020s, public attention began to shift away from IT towards cybernetics - using technology to physically enhance the body. The IT sector had been slowing down for a number of years - little new had been happening there. But recent advances in battery technology and compact lightweight motors made portable applications possible, so there were these stirrings in the cybernetics field.

Initially these were quite simple mechanisms - like the "power glove" that gave you a super strong grip, or super crushing stength. Imagine a minimalist exoskeleton for your hand composed of metal and little cylindrical motors. It worked like the powered steering for your car. You apply a little force with your fingers, and when that's sensed, the motors apply extra force for you. You still have complete control over your hand - just that the things in your grasp just feel softer or weaker than they actually are.

Later on the glove was extended into an exoskeleton for the whole arm, with powered wrist and elbow joints. Those were called "bionic arms". Then came jackets which were worn over the upper body, powering both arms and additionally powered the shoulder joints, and reinforced the back, etc.

Leg exoskeletons were slower to develop for some reason, though the legs were often where battery packs were located, and that has became standard practice in recent implemetations. Perhaps that's why, but leg enhancements have always felt lagging a few years behind everything else.

In the latter half of the 2020s, these exoskeletons evolved into semi-sealed full body systems, that provided an additional homeostatic function - maintaining an optimal climate inside them, around the body. These became known as "biosuits".

Heating of buildings and homes was becoming less and less common, and not only because of rising fuel costs, but because biosuits provided personal warmth much more efficiently. Personal warmth is portable in a way that the warmth of a building is not. The heating of buildings began to be seen as an awkward and wreckless attitude from the past - heating these huge spaces, when you only want to heat yourself.

Another development in the latter half of the 2020s was new kind of footwear. When standing on a special surface, the shoe could propel the foot forwards/backwards using a new form of linear motor that pushed electromagnetically against the surface material. The shoes had a steel blade underneath to glide on, like an ice skate but the blade is lower profile than that. The shoes are aptly known as "blades".

By sensing pressure points in the foot, your blades determine your centre of mass and keep you balanced and upright by shifting themselves into the right positions beneath your body.

The special surface they need to work is a vitrous material. It looks similar to volcanic glass. It's made from a fine mixture of sand and metal salts that gets fused in situ at high temperature. The material has a strong paramagnetic property which is reactive against the linear motors embedded in one's blades, so creating the push. While the hard glassy surface is ideal for the blades to skate along with little friction.

Around 2030, changes in perception towards technology saw the world being aggressively redesigned to cater for the technologically enhanced human, at the expense of the technologically backward.

For example, roads began being resurfaced with this vitrous material. It was thinner, harder, and much cheaper than asphalt.

Cars were becoming less and less common anyway. In the 2020s, young people were less interested in learning to drive than every generation before them, going back to when cars were first invented. And this downward trend steepened dramatically in the 2030s. People travelled more with their blades. It's how they wanted to travel, and they did so wherever road surfacing allowed it. Converting as many asphalt roads to vitreous as possible was demanded by a lot of people, and it was globally anticipated to be the way forward. Cars were seen as awkward things from the past - deadweight that you're transporting from point A to point B, when you only want to transport yourself. And cars took up so much space, everywhere, all of the time. Road conversion just made sense.

Blades are limited to a maximum of 40km/h, which is considered the sweetspot between safety and speed. But it's an arbitary limit, and some individuals hack them to remove this limit. Blade-racing became a new 'underground' sport for thrillseekers, much like street racing was in the 20th century. And 200km/h is about the natural limit of blades on level ground, which sounds crazy, and it is if you ever try it. The self-balancing system seems to work even at these speeds. But losing traction and shooting off at a tangent on turns is the greatest risk, and quite often proves fatal. Once a continuous stretch of vitreous existed between Ontario and Southern California, we witnessed the greatest race in human history, with a few hundred of the world's top bladeracers competiting for the prestige.

Once vitreous was commonplace, recharging your biosuit's power cells became possible practically everywhere with solar charging points being installed along the roads and in many other social spaces. They're big white obelisks, and you just place your hand upon them. Coils embedded in your glove pickup energy contactlessly, and it takes only a few minutes to fully recharge.

As biosuits became more and more common, clothing became less and less common, as people were generally naked inside them. And with this aggressive bias towards tech I described earlier, the wearing of clothes also began to be seen as backward - like cavemen wrapping rags around their bodies to try and keep warm.

The efforts people used to go to with clothing was laughable in hindsight - We'd build up huge collections of these expensive rags, providing space for them all, washing and drying them each week. And they didn't enhance people's abilities in any way. They weren't even enough to keep warm, because we had to heat our buildings too. Cotton farming was terrible for the environment, and artificial fabrics cause a ton of microplastic pollution every time they are washed... It was hard to fathom why we held onto these crazy traditions for so long.

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This all started as something of an underground cybernetics movement in the early 2020s, but grew steadily in popularity, spurred on by the economic turmoil throughout the decade, and eventually flourished into this revolutionary wave around 2030. It was an optimistic time for those who embraced it - the aggressive technological changes, and the proactive abandonment of the past.

A lot of these changes were seen as necessary for ecological sustainability too, which was an increasingly hot topic through the 2020s. The early adopters felt empowered by that. This was something they could do, that could foreseeably save the planet if enough people get behind it, and would pave the way towards a better quality of life than their parents.

You see, technological enhancement creates a new form of autonomy, so much so that it's a "disruptive technology" with social, economic and political ramifications. Biosuits satisfy so many of our needs, that they have lessened our dependence on the established order, and consequently nerfed the power which the established order had over us. And through this shift of power, they facilitate the changes which the world deperately needs. Ecological sustainability is one of those changes.

The thing is, cybernetics is visible - in the 2020s it became a form of self-expression that communicated this certain set of values to others. It gave adopters a shared identity. It was an open rejection of past values, aspirations and power structures. It was a movement people wanted to join, to be a part of, because they could see how it would work, and how it was a win-win situation, both for the self and for the planet.

There were of course a glut of people left behind in the wake of these changes, but they were mocked and looked down upon. Rejecting this technological change was the same as rejecting ecological sustainability or being an apologist of the past - both very unpopular viewpoints. Such people were seen as part of the problem, and they were cancelled along with the past.