Image source: Eco Life (https://www.ecolife.zone/)

By Rohit Talwar, Steve Wells, and Alexandra Whittington

Fast Future’s Life in 2025: “Say Hello Say Goodbye” Scenarios were developed in partnership with Huawei Consumer Business Group. This latest scenario explores how a range of exponentially advancing technologies such as AI and big data could transform the way we relate to family and friends.

By 2025, a combination of the power of 5G and a range of immersive and connected technologies should allow us to take part in celebrations with friends and family across the world.

By 2025, technology innovation should enable family members across the planet to work together to create a multisensory immersive birthday experience. Everything from the way we sustain connection, through to how we care for the elderly will be subject to radical change resulting from the rapid pace of advance in these core technologies.

Distance won’t be an issue when it comes to meeting up, with 5G allowing us to spend more time together. Immersive and connected technologies could help us to take part in virtual celebrations with friends and family across the world. Video calls will evolve through AR to allow you to experience multi-sensory communication with family even from thousands of miles away.

Say goodbye to…

• Missing family celebrations – hug grandma on her 80th birthday while you are 12,000KM away, smell the flowers you sent her, and taste the sumptuous birthday dinner.

Using the rapidly advancing developments in brain wave interpretation technologies, our grandparents could recreate multi-sensory experiences from their past to share with younger generations. Combining images and even videos with touch, smell, taste, and emotional sensations, once forgotten experiences can be brought to life. This could be supplemented by AI technology, drawing on internet searches for additional information to fill in the historic context.

Technology could also help bring back the element of surprise around special occasions such as birthdays – rather than giving out wish lists or receiving money. AI located within our devices, might talk to the AI of our friends and family members – sharing what we might like as a gift, based on the AIs knowledge of our current interests and the things we’ve been absorbed by.

Say goodbye to…

• Regifting of unwanted presents – by 2025, all gifts can truly be a surprise because our AI has communicated our desires secretly to our loved ones.

Technologies such as AI might also help increase inter-generational bonds by translating the words, phrases and concepts used by one generation into something the other might understand and relate to.

Visualisations from AR and VR tools might make family histories more interesting to young people and help the elderly deal with memory problems. Storytelling at family events might involve recalling imagery or sounds conjured up with digital technology or smart speakers in real-time.

Say goodbye to…

• Forgotten experiences – the interconnected, smart home of the future may be outfitted to display family photos and videos on demand at all times, perhaps with special holiday settings for family gatherings.

The authors are futurists with Fast Future – a professional foresight firm specializing in delivering keynote speeches, executive education, research, and consulting for global clients on the emerging future and the impacts of change. To arrange a presentation on the Life in 2025 scenarios please contact

To access more of our articles and learn more about our work please visit www.fastfuture.com

You can find summaries of the ten scenarios here https://consumer.huawei.com/uk/campaign/truestories/tech/

Image:https://pixabay.com/illustrations/children-family-network-web-4685126/ by geralt