In 2040 there will be no nations, the geopolitical world will be united under a great confederation in which every person will be free to move about and everyone will be free to profess their beliefs and sexuality without any fear because everything will be accepted. There will be no poverty and wealth will be equally distributed, people will live with respect for nature and animals, and we will all be vegans.

The physical work is handled by robots and their operators. With artificial intelligence, working on code will not require writing lines from scratch, but gluing code together from pieces. This will lower the threshold for older people and those without IT training to enter and stay in the job market. At the same time, boring and low-paying white-collar work for lower corporate positions will be almost completely automated. Entertainment will move almost entirely to augmented reality. Automobiles and mass transportation will become semi-automated, with little intervention from the driver. Roads will be designed to reduce the number of intersections as much as possible. Energy storage will become efficient enough to reduce energy prices and relieve the burden on transmission networks to households. There will also be designs for settlements that take advantage of natural land formations in rocks or underground, saving energy for air conditioning and heating.

Some things would certainly be different in 2040. First and foremost, technology would have developed enormously. AI is already a big topic today, but in 15 to 20 years, all technical devices will probably be able to talk and help people. The washing machine will be able to wash and then hang up laundry independently or even dry it without a dryer. It will be powered by wind or solar energy, with the equipment being installed in every house. People will be more environmentally friendly and their technology will support them in this. Plastic will no longer exist. Instead, a new material made from hemp or a similar product will be used as packaging material. After it has been used up, it will be taken to collection points through our modern waste garbage cans and recycled there.

Energy has really become cheaper! Electricity can be produced cheaply and safely with clean nuclear fusion power plants. Cheap electricity means that electric cars with the latest battery technologies are finally the answer to mobility problems. Together with the production of green hydrogen, solar and wind energy, the pressure on the environment will be greatly reduced. Production costs in many industries will be lower, resulting in increased profits. European countries are better able to tackle many social and environmental problems. The EU has become what it was intended to be from the outset. One state for all Europeans. Europe can act on an equal footing with other economic blocs and solve many of our world's problems. We have once again invested more resources in research into new technologies. But there is still a lot to do on our common earth.