When we talk about the future, we often talk about how everyday life will change. That means: on the one hand, we “only” have the new technology, but it will be used in all areas of our lives. So not only in our everyday life, in our profession or in individual areas, but in all 17 areas of life at the same time.

This seems frightening to many people, because if something changes everywhere …. But the opposite is the case, because there are many possibilities. This list should help to divide life into smaller units and to take a closer look at what new opportunities are opening up there and how these can be newly networked in the sense of a greater quality of life and economy for as many people as possible.

But let’s just think about industrialisation. In order for it to take hold, we didn’t just need the steam engine (aka the internet today). We also needed trade unions that fought for social laws, for health insurance, sick pay … otherwise working on the assembly line would not have been possible in the long term. Working time, leisure time, these are terms that only became established with industrialisation. We also needed new money, bank money, insurance in general, supermarkets because no one grew food at home any more, energy suppliers, the automobile, buses, trams, hospitals … our entire society adapted to industrialisation. Also the tax system, politics, our way of believing, all 17 areas of life. That is why they are so important. Because even today, new developments are happening that no one expected.

Of course, we are getting a new money, the digital euro. And in the medium term, this will no longer only be able to represent a financial value, but also other data. These will help to show the true value of goods. The sustainability, the social relevance. Or take the tokenisation of trees. It helps us to be able to increasingly assess each tree and its relevance to the climate. Maybe one day a country like Brazil, through the Amazon, which is responsible for about a quarter of our climate, will get money like we pay for commodities today! Products that are produced locally show this through the data stored in the digital currency.

Just as possible are the gardeners and landscapers who are helping cities to become climate-neutral with Gardening-as-a-Service. It is the new agriculturalists who, instead of selling products, are increasingly selling data on nutritional values that, together with our health data from the apps on our smartphones and patient data, can offer a new form of preventive care. It is the caretakers who suddenly help to bring city life to a new level of quality of life as central contacts in the neighbourhood. It could even be the banks, which increasingly map not only financial but also sustainability values via digital currencies and thus become a control instrument for a healthy society. Which, by the way, they already were once, in the 50s and 60s, with the mandate to promote regions, their companies and people. Or even autonomous driving systems that involve even remote villages in regional and national issues again and support local value creation that makes life worth living there again – perhaps even more worth living than in metropolises.

What must be clear to us is that the digitality that is entering our lives will change them. We can look at it curiously now and say “yes” to the new, experiment with it and say “yes” to the first successes, collaborate with other people, sectors, companies or regions and say “yes” again to new possibilities. Increasingly, new possibilities will develop from these “yeses”. If we say “no” from the beginning, the only certainty is that nothing new will develop.

Of course, behind all these possibilities mentioned here is positive thinking. A trust in people to shape life in a positive way. I know we are sceptical about this, because we have learned from an early age that we are all competitors. No collaborative ideas, every man for himself, America first! Not entirely wrong, by the way, because only when we are doing well can we collaborate with others. Those who do so will quickly have an advantage, creating networks, friendships and thus new systems that spread quickly. So it should be: America first and together! Replace “America” with a country, a name, a company of your choice. Then you have it.

For each of the 17 areas of life, there is a multitude of developments to observe, which complement and develop each other on a daily basis. No one can capture them in their entirety. For this reason alone, collaboration is essential. Specialisation is increasingly being supplemented by generalisation. And we are increasingly moving from efficiency back to excellence, quality – not only of products but also of life, quality of life.

My approach is therefore to present different possibilities of the individual areas of life and possible interconnections and in this way to develop people’s own sensitivity to them. This then serves to recognise and use new possibilities in one’s own life or professional life. In my experience, this is the most efficient way to find new solutions: Showing people how they can recognise new possibilities and then trusting them to do so and implement them in their environment.

Try it out and join in. You will quickly see how the world changes in a positive way. If we first focus on positive thoughts, the few negative side effects of the new possibilities are usually quite manageable, because they can be contained. Conversely, if we think of all the negative probabilities first, we move towards infinity and make no progress. Besides, there are already enough negative thoughts, you don’t need to think about them again. Instead, make a positive future worth living for yourself – and for the people around you and on this planet at the same time.

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