Stories from the future are always interesting.
Yes, you read that right. Stories from the future can be told today, but they are not always what you think they are. They might fall under science fiction or fantasy, but beyond that, they offer us a way to imagine what lies ahead, engaging both our creative and cognitive faculties. They serve an important role in helping us visualize plausible worlds.
I loved reading “The Story of You: What might Singapore look like for those born today?” in today’s (8 Aug 2025) edition of The Straits Times. As the summary puts it, the piece envisions life for a child born in 2025, projecting all the way to 2105 and beyond.
Drawing on current trends and data, as well as interviews with 19 experts, The Straits Times envisions one speculative and possible future for the first members of Generation Beta who are born in 2025, as part of its Born Tomorrow series.
This kind of speculative futures work, with storytelling at its core, is not prophecy, nor is it pure science fiction. It’s a fascinating discipline at the intersection of science, art, and management that helps us imagine what could be. And rather than predict the future, it helps us prepare for it. We should take this seriously. It’s not just a story emerging from an inventive mind, but from a structured method. It is based on trends, uncertainties, and expert insights that explores the edges of science and culture.
Of course, any attempt to think about the future is always constrained by the past. As futurist Arthur C. Clarke once said, “The most daring prophecies seem laughably conservative.” Prophecy tends to be conservative. I did feel this article didn’t push the boundaries of imagination enough. It’s rather cautious, even. But it’s still heartening to see this kind of scenario thinking becoming more mainstream, rather than being confined to academic circles.
Interestingly, I had written a similar imagined future scenario back in 2016: "October 10th, 2030". It was my own small experiment in speculative storytelling - combining data, trends, and imagination.
And now, with the support of AI, this process of informed ‘hallucination’ and envisioning possible futures can become far more accessible.
Maybe in this field, some of AI’s hallucination problems could actually be a feature, and not a bug.
Banner Image Credit © Edisaacs | Stock Free Images
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