2040 – Impact Lab

2040, AI, future predictions, future report, future scenario, future tech

Quantum Archaeology: Resurrecting the Dead Through Information

October 19, 2025

By Futurist Thomas Frey

The Most Audacious Idea in Human History
Imagine a world where death is not final—where every human being who has ever lived can one day be restored. Not as ghosts or memories, but as living, thinking, feeling individuals reconstructed through data. This is the vision behind quantum archaeology, a provocative new field that proposes to resurrect the dead using future advances in artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and nanotechnology. It’s not mysticism. It’s information science taken to its ultimate conclusion: if every particle interaction leaves a trace, then—at least in theory—no life is ever truly lost.

2040, future predictions, future report, future scenario, future trends

The Rise of the One-Person Unicorn: How Solo Founders Will Redefine Billion-Dollar Companies

October 18, 2025

By Futurist Thomas Frey

For most of modern history, billion-dollar companies were built by armies—teams of engineers, executives, marketers, and investors. But by 2040, a new species of business will dominate the global economy: the one-person unicorn. These are ventures so tightly integrated with AI and automation that a single individual can run what looks—on paper—like a massive organization. These solo founders won’t manage teams; they’ll manage algorithms. They’ll scale without hiring, automate without overhead, and personalize without effort. Their only real competition will be others who think faster, adapt sooner, and train their AIs better.

2040, future predictions, future report, future scenario

The New Royalty: Who Rules in 2040

October 18, 2025

By Futurist Thomas Frey
A new aristocracy is coalescing in plain sight, and it isn’t wearing crowns—it’s wielding capabilities. Titles, legacy wealth, and celebrity clout still sparkle, but they no longer confer decisive power. By 2040, status flows to those who can direct fleets of autonomous systems, convene global networks on demand, and turn intent into outcomes at machine speed. Ownership mattered in the industrial era. In the agent era, orchestration wins. The highest-return literacy across society is capability amplification—the ability to speak fluently to software that does. Below is the emerging order, ranked not by inheritance, but by how effectively each cohort converts vision into reality.

2040, future predictions, future scenario, future trends

The Childcare Provider Parents Secretly Trust More

October 12, 2025

By Futurist Thomas Frey

By 2040, one in four dual-income families in developed nations employs a full-time humanoid childcare robot—a machine capable of supervising, teaching, playing, and even offering emotional reassurance to young children. These aren’t metallic nannies with blinking lights—they’re soft-skinned, expressive, conversational companions that can detect mood shifts, sing lullabies in perfect pitch, and respond to a child’s tone of voice faster than any human could. The provocative truth? Parents are starting to admit that they trust the robots more than human babysitters.