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The Year Everything Changed: 2025’s 13 Tech Breakthroughs That Rewrote Reality

December 9, 2025

By Futurist Thomas Frey

When Science Fiction Became Tuesday Afternoon

2025 wasn’t just another year of incremental tech improvements. It was the year AI agents started working autonomously, robots learned by watching, and machines began managing their own money. It was the year gene editing moved from labs to clinics, batteries finally broke their improvement plateau, and brain-computer interfaces crossed from experiments to everyday applications.

Most importantly, 2025 was the year we stopped talking about the future and started living in it. The technologies we’ve been predicting for years didn’t arrive gradually—they hit commercial viability almost simultaneously, creating a convergence that’s reshaping every industry faster than institutions can adapt.

Here are the 13 accomplishments that made 2025 the inflection point where everything changed.

future predictions, future report, future scenario, future tech

The Future of Coworking: What I Learned From Losing Two Businesses Before Their Time

December 6, 2025

By Futurist Thomas Frey

When You’re Right But Too Early

In 2012, we launched DaVinci Coders at the DaVinci Institute—the second coding school in the country, training future developers in Ruby, Python, JavaScript, and game design. We saw the massive demand for coding skills years before bootcamps became ubiquitous. We built curriculum, attracted students, and delivered results.

Then the state insisted all our courses be approved through their regulatory board, which met every other month. While we navigated bureaucratic approval processes, the market exploded. By 2017, over 750 coding schools existed. The combination of intense competition and state mandates requiring months-long approval cycles for curriculum updates made it impossible to stay current. Technology moves in weeks; regulation moves in quarters. We couldn’t compete while handcuffed by regulatory lag, so we closed DaVinci Coders.

We pivoted to what we’d actually been doing even longer—coworking. Colony Workspace operated at nearly 100% occupancy, serving remote workers, freelancers, and small teams who needed professional space and community. Then COVID hit. People stopped coming. The numbers dwindled week by week. With no light at the end of the tunnel, Colony Workspace became another victim of the COVID era.

Two businesses, both ahead of their markets, both killed by factors we couldn’t control. But here’s what I learned: being early to the right idea teaches you what the successful version looks like when timing finally aligns. The coding school model we pioneered is now a massive industry. And coworking—the model that seemed dead in 2020—is about to explode in ways the first generation never anticipated.

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

Nine Ways to Earn Money from AI Agents: HyperCycle’s Internet of AI

October 23, 2025

By Futurist Thomas Frey

The Economic Revolution Nobody’s Talking About
While most of the world is still arguing over whether artificial intelligence will take jobs, a quieter revolution is already creating new income streams. HyperCycle’s Internet of AI—known as the IoAI—is turning AI agents into autonomous economic actors. These digital entities don’t just analyze or assist; they earn money, compete on performance, build reputations, and transact through micropayments that traditional payment systems can’t handle. The infrastructure for this new economy exists now. HyperCycle’s distributed node network allows anyone—individuals, entrepreneurs, or organizations—to deploy AI agents that earn revenue 24/7, without human supervision. Here are nine ways to profit from this next-generation machine economy.