1 . There’s a classic short story in which a young man travels years ahead and meets his future self. Narratives like this have always been related to science fiction. But what if you could meet your future self?

I’m a psychologist and professor. My research over the past 15 years isn’t far from this theme. I’ve largely focused on how people think about and relate to their future selves, and explored the reasons why we have such a hard time making long-term decisions. In my research, I’ve learnt that we often imagine our future selves like strangers, which can impede us in making long-term choices. One way to bridge the emotional gap is to think of future selves in more concrete and vivid ways, like writing letters to and from one’s future self, which can strengthen the connection between current and future selves.

Admittedly, having people engage in an imagined conversation is a far cry from actually meeting one’s future self. But it’s believed that far richer interactions may happen in the near future through artificial intelligence (AI). It wouldn’t be predicting exactly what choices you’d make. It’d be more about showing your potential, based on the lives of people similar to you: not just one possible life for you, but rather, the most possible life path for you. Such interactions could offer valuable insights into our potential future selves.

So, to return to my original question: if you could time-travel to meet your future self, what aspects of your life would you want to know more about? I realized, through thorough reflections, that the most powerful questions would be ones that helped me make better choices today —questions exploring personal growth, regrets and unfulfilled actions.

Actually, you don’t need to wait for time travel or advanced AI for answers that you can act on. Through my research, I’ve learnt that simply taking a bit of time to picture this meeting can help you make better choices now. All you need is a little imagination, and the willingness to put yourself in the shoes of a person you currently treat as a stranger.

4 . By 2050 we’ll be able to send memories, emotions and feelings across the Internet.     1     Teenagers will love it. Instead of putting an emoticon (表情符号) at the end of every sentence, they will use an emotion: anger, happiness, or excitement.

I’m talking about telepathy (心灵感应), really. We’ll still communicate the traditional way.     2     Our children will wonder, What is a keyboard? We will enter the age of the “brain net”.

Medicine will develop fast, too. We will have cured certain forms of cancer, and we will have begun to treat the disease like the common cold. We’ll live with it. It will no longer be deadly.     3     Technology will help in this respect.     4     Smart toilets will perform liquid biopsies (液体活检) to discover cancer cells. Smart objects like phones will check us over automatically.

    5     By 2050 I think we’ll be able to grow many of the important organs (器官) of the body and, rather than allow the organs we’re born with to become old and weak, we’ll replace them. That’s all coming. And it doesn’t take much imagination to realise it.

8 . The future of the city is here. Sidewalk Labs, a company owned by Alphabet(which also owns Google), won a competition to design a neighborhood by Lake Ontario, Canada. The competition was held as a way to improve the building, public spaces, and transportation in the area .

The city of Toronto has promised $1.25 billion for roads, sidewalks, electricity, water, and so on. Sidewalk Labs has already put $50 million into the project.

The neighborhood has already been given the name "Quayside. "When finished, it will include many high-tech and environmentally friendly designs. These include heated sidewalks and cycle tracks to melt（融化）snow and self-driving buses. There will also be narrower street with less car and more room for public spaces like parks. The buildings will be made of plastic to make them more affordable and easier to change. Underground passages will be used for rubbish collection and for repair.

There will also be environmentally friendly energy use, changeable traffic lights, and continuous improvement through data (数据) collection and studies. This data will come from sensors(传感器) collecting information about traffic or noise levels, energy use, waste output, etc.

There are, of course, some worries about the project. One is that there is already a housing shortage in Toronto, and making an expensive, high-tech neighborhood won't help with that. It is important for Quayside to be used by the elderly, the disabled, the poor and people of different races, not only by people who work at tech companies.

Another worry is about data collection and people' s privacy. Dan Dctoroff, the CEO of Sidewalk Labs, said that the data collection will only be used to improve people's life in Quayside. He added that privacy can be put into every part of the neighborhood.

Since this kind of neighborhood is new, no doubt there will be many problems, and new laws will have to be made for this kind of high-tech housing. But hopefully, we will be able to see such a futuristic neighborhood soon.

9 . Our future selves used to be a riddle. Now, thanks to social media filters (滤镜), we can stare them right in the face. People fell in love with TikTok this month to share themselves “aging” in real time using a filter “time travel”. Set to a sad song, the effect shows the user’s face slowly getting older, complete with wrinkles (皱纹) and sunspots.

Camera filters that age you have been around for years. But advancements in AI are making the results more real. Doctor Aleksandra Brown said the TikTok time travel filter does well in guessing how a given face would age.

As we get older, our facial skin thins, fat dissolves (溶解) and gravity pulls everything downward. Not everyone is pleased about this. One of Brown’s friends didn’t like watching time fly past. She couldn’t stand watching herself age 50 years in 15 seconds-could life really go by that fast? Brown cried herself after using the aging effect on her own young daughter. She won’t live to see her daughter get that old, she pointed out.

For other people, the time travel filter brought up unexpected positive feelings. Actor Jonathan Bennett shared a video saying his own filtered face recalled happy memories of his late father. Nicole Loehle, a 24-year-old in New Jersey, tested the effect with her boyfriend. It gave her a new viewpoint, she said, she could imagine the relationship lasting into their old age.

There’s no correct way to age. But it’s important to remember that no one can stop time or undo its effects. “I keep trying to view aging as a gift.” Brown said, “Some people don’t get to age, unfortunately?”

10 . Travel is predicted to look extremely different in 2070.

Take airports for example, paperwork will be a thing of the past. Instead of paper passports,your information will be stored in the cloud. This type of technology won’t just include what we are familiar with today——like fingerprints or face scans—but also your heartbeat, as everyone’s heartbeat is unique.

There will be no need to check in. The facial recognition programme will instead be able to recognise you, match you with your booked flight and send messages to your phone as you walk through the airport without stopping.

Your bags, especially the heavy ones, will be sent directly from your train or taxi to the right plane. And that taxi will not be like the ones we know today. People will be expected to travel to the airport--and around their holiday destinations-in eVTOLs, which refers to électric air taxis that can take off and land without a runway.

As for the trouble of packing, 3D printers will provide perfect solutions. Simply provide your destination with your size using a body scan before you fly and, upon arrival, you will find a wardrobe(衣橱) filled with 3D-printed clothes. When you leave, these clothes will be recycled and. reprinted for the next tourist. Not only will this solve the problem of packing, but also make holiday fashion more environment-friendly.

While the predictions might seem unbelievable now, you only have to look back 50 years to realize it’s all possible. Think back to 1973 when smartphones were just a wild dream. “Google” seemed like a made-up word then, and notebook computers were still almost years away from being invented. Similarly, when we look forward to the next 50 years, the possibilities for development in technology for travel are endless.