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Optimised, tracked, and mildly disappointed.
Sleep, food, love and free time, all with a dashboard attached.
7 stories
A transparency rule written for advertising would extend to ordinary posts, attaching an edit manifest to every image. The phone, which has been smoothing faces since the day it came out of the box, would have to say so too.
A consultation paper would give every adult one untaxed return flight a year. The second would still be available — at a surcharge, and with a dropdown menu in which a funeral, a wedding and a fortnight in the sun would have to be told apart.
A product-passport scheme in preparation would give every garment a scannable record of its fibres, its factory and its repairs. The rule would work exactly as designed. The trouble would start with the coats that came before it.
A draft municipal ordinance would chip and weigh every household container, grade the contents and print the result on the invoice. A street-level league table would be attached to the back page. It would be advisory, and public.
A restaurant group would trial demand-based pricing across its digital menus, so the same plate could carry two prices in one evening. Nobody has asked the person who would have to explain this to a table of four.
A pricing model under design at an institutional landlord would retire the annual rent review in favour of a weekly rate. The figure on the tenant portal would refresh every Tuesday at six, and residents who never query it would collect a small loyalty credit.
A pilot programme being designed by insurers and grocers would issue personalised meal recommendations with a discount attached. Following them would be entirely voluntary, in the way that such things are.
MISTAKE
One email a week. The future, before it files a press release.
Worst case: you laugh. Best case: we predicted the future.