Imagine a future where social media platforms like Facebook are no longer accessed as websites or housed inside apps.

Instead, Facebook is a wearable technology that completely reimagines the entire idea of social media. Rather than pulling out your phone to find all the random things posted by friends, family, and strangers, Facebook comes as a set of multipurpose contact lenses with an endless number of customizable settings and extensions, allowing a person to reveal whatever they want about themselves and experience however much, or as little, of the digital world they wish. Gone are the days where social media is more of a social collision. No one wants to see things they don’t want to see or read embarrassing opinions from people they would never associate with in real life. That world is old and everyone got tired of it. Now, the digital world has left the screen, and it is unified with the analog world. There is an augmented reality painted on top of literally everything, and with Facebook contact lenses, Facebook World is fully accessible, customizable to personal taste, filled with exciting surprises, and obviously, the most important part; it makes socializing easier than ever. 

Let’s say, you are walking down the street. As a Facebook member, Facebook World is all yours to explore and experience. For example, if you want other Facebook users to know you are single and looking for a relationship, using the augmented reality provided by your lenses, you can indicate that piece of information and make it public. When another user passes you on that same street, that person will see that information in your public profile, which appears all around you in any configuration you like. If you want to highlight that you are a huge Star Wars fan, fly the Millenium Falcon above your head, and everyone in Facebook World will see it, giving you the opportunity to connect with other Star Wars fans while out and about in the real world. Maybe, you are in a bad mood, and you don’t want anyone bothering you. Simply put an angry emoji next to “Mood” and everyone will know that it’s probably best to leave you alone. Any information you want to make public or private to anyone who is also part of Facebook World is completely up to you. It is a entirely enhanced way of using media, socially.

As far as advertising and enhanced creative experiences are concerned, companies and regular people, partnered with Facebook, work 24/7 to clothe the world with the augmented reality that fits you best. If you want the sky to look like it is filled with exotic birds as you walk down a snowy sidewalk lined with digital candy canes in the dead of August, that is up to you. If you want to see dinosaurs, everyone with the Central Park Dinosaur Extension, sponsored by the Museum of Natural History, can populate the park with impressive, living, breathing, full sized digital dinosaurs and easily find others with which to share the experience. Also, if you do not want to see any advertising or creative enhancements, that feature can be disabled; although, you probably should turn that feature on from time to time. There are some impossibly good deals that you cannot get anywhere without enabling Ads and Creativity, and honestly, even some of the ads are worth just seeing because they are astonishingly beautiful. Not to mention, landing a free appetizer or drink at your favorite restaurant around the corner once in a while is pretty amazing. Also, there is nothing more incredible than when that new Tesla ad pops up on Third Street. There’s sharks and spaceships, and it is crazy, so when you’re down that way, turn on that feature! Even if you think you don’t want to see ads, check them out once in a while because there are also tons of local artists and businesses who contribute so much beauty to this augmented landscape, and it is good to support your locals. 
When it comes to education, if you want to learn how to do anything new, earn a degree or certification, with Facebook World University, there is no reason to go to a classroom anymore. Professors are now your Subject Matter Experts, and they work to create augmented content you can access right inside your home. A holographic expert guides you through the nuances of every lesson. Poetry comes to life with text and visuals combined. Shakespeare walks into the room and the Globe Theater erupts from the floor and suddenly the walls of your bedroom are transformed. Astronomy lessons come complete with planets that you can reach out and examine in the palm of your hand. You can even make your kitchen floor look like the surface of Mars. What if you want to be a heart surgeon? Your educational experience will be nothing less than exceptional because the ability to create a digital human heart in any stage of health or failure is perfected, and your personal SME will literally walk with you through the arteries. The possibilities are endless and the nature of how we learn has dramatically evolved.
Finally, the hardware also comes with real physical benefits. Not only are Facebook lenses a window into an entire holographic reality, they can also do things like change your eye color instantly. They can capture pictures and video based on your blinking preferences and conveniently save everything to the cloud. Perhaps even more impressive, the lenses monitor the quality of eyesight and adjust in real time, providing constant perfect 20/20 vision. If you are out for a jog, without ever having to pull a device out of your pocket, you know whether or not you are dehydrated and by how much using your personalized monitor. If you are ever lost in Facebook World, just pull up the GPS and green arrows appear on the road in front of you until you’ve safely reached your destination. What about the bigger world around you? Imagine the health stats on your smartwatch applied to any desired personal or global issue, including the health of the earth itself. There are extensions available that show how much the ice caps have melted, and it is updated every second. In Facebook World, people have the ability to look around and physically see what the future might look like and how fast it is coming if we don’t change our ways.

Now, you may be wondering why I chose Facebook World as an example, and honestly, it is only because of how many people already depend on Facebook. It is way more than just a household name in that it has managed to become integrated into our very identities whether we want to admit it or not. I think familiarity is what is going to help these digital landscapes grow. Facebook is connected to everything, and they are already building a world in virtual reality, same as Atari and a lot of other companies with a lot of ambition. Couple that with heavy advancements in both virtual and augmented reality, and we are reinventing the world. That said, the entire nature of all social media is poised for a monumental shift, one that has already begun. Social media in and of itself is not a bad thing, but there are parts of it that have obvious negative personal and societal effects, and it is only a matter of time before those elements are filtered out and the entire experience evolves into something completely different. I imagine there might be a Facebook World, a Google World, an Amazon World, a TikTok World and a lot of independently created worlds, potentially leading to weird dark underground ones. Perhaps people will respond to these worlds by preferring one or the other in the same way that Playstation and Xbox users prefer their respective worlds. Who knows? Maybe in a hundred years, humanity will decide it is time to bring the digital worlds all together in digital peace or digital revolutionaries will create illegal tunnels where one could travel from one to the other freely. Either way, as it continues to grow, each one will have to compete for your attention, and I think it is going to get very interesting. I also think it is important to accept that this future is closing in fast because if we accept it and work with it, we have a better chance of changing the world for the better rather than suddenly one day realizing we are trapped in a dystopia that we could have shaped for the better if we had just paid closer attention.