What will the near future look like? Chances are, it will be somewhere between the techno-utopia that Silicon Valley startup founders like to talk about and all-out disaster. Unless there is a hugely disruptive global event, it will look much like the present - with the addition of subtle innovations (both good and bad) that are already in the works.
This is the future imagined by the Near Future Laboratory, a team of designers and researchers that create design fiction - that is, fictional scenarios that elucidate possible futures for humanity.
In the TBD Catalog, a "catalog of the near future's normal everyday," the Near Future Laboratory has put together 107 pages of design fiction in a sort of SkyMall catalog of the 2020s (SkyMall is plotting its comeback, so who knows, it might still be around).
Check out excerpts below.