Dear Younger Me:

Dear Younger Me:

Okay, this is gonna be kinda weird for both of us. I’m sending this letter back in time (25 years) to you because there’s some stuff happening here in the future that you just aren’t gonna believe. No, seriously, this stuff is nuts and I want you to start getting ready in 2000 for some of these developments in 2025.

First—and you won’t believe this, so you’d better be sitting down—we have driverless cars. They’re safer than human drivers in many conditions, and the newest models don’t even have a steering wheel or pedals.

They’re battery operated, safe, convenient, and can go about 350 miles before they need to be recharged. It’s basically a driverless taxi that doesn’t smell like coconut and weed. Pretty soon nobody will even need a car. Personally, I’m going to miss driving my own car.

In my front pocket I’m carrying a smartphone made by Apple Computer (see below). It has 1TB of storage. That’s the equivalent of 694,444 floppy disks.

I can make calls on it. No biggie, right? Well, hold on—it’s also a camera that can hold 250,000 photos. It can hold 1,428 music CD’s, surf the internet, hail taxis, order food, track health stats, and handle all of our banking.

Sounds great, right? The downside is that these things have taken over our lives. The average American spends 7-10 hours a day on smartphones and other screens. Everyone stares at their phones constantly like zombies. Most people even take their smartphone to the toilet with them. Yeah, it’s that bad.

After twenty years of this we are finally trying to remove them from kid’s classrooms, but even that is an enormous struggle.

Nobody under age 40 carries a wallet anymore….or cash. You can pay for things using the phone’s digital wallet. You no longer need your physical driver’s license or credit cards. They’re digital. At some grocery stores you can pay by waving your hand across a scanner. Yes, your hand. You don’t even have to touch anything. Crazy, huh?

Today, in addition to our driverless cars, we have unmanned rockets—reusable ones built by the private sector. A single Falcon 9 rocket will do more launches and carry more payload to orbit this year than the Space Shuttle program did in its entire history. Last week, one Falcon 9 rocket completed its 500th launch—and it landed itself back on the launchpad. It refueled and went right back up.

We also have space tourism. For about $500,000 you can go up in one of these rockets. If you think we might wanna go up, put $2,500 into Apple stock today. It’ll be worth $500,000 in 25 years. You’re welcome.

The results of the Presidential election later this year won’t be known until 36 days after the polls close. It’s complicated. New York real estate developer Donald Trump decides not to run in 2000 after all. But wait, in about 17 years Donald Trump runs for President and wins. He runs in 2024 and wins again.

The new President of Russia, Vladimir Putin, is still in power today. Don’t be fooled by him. He’s responsible for the death of millions of people.

By the way, I know Tiger won three Majors this year, but he royally screws up his life in a few years. (As a result, he never catches Nicklaus). But he’s not alone. You won’t believe what comes out about Bill Cosby, Harvey Weinstein, Kevin Spacey, Jared (the Subway sandwich guy), Rudy Giuliani, P. Diddy, Prince Andrew, and Matt Lauer. Four of them are in prison today. The rest probably should be. 

There’s no more “Be Kind, Rewind” or late fees. All the Blockbuster stores closed. Good riddance. Nobody goes to movie theaters either.

For about $15 a month, we get unlimited new and old movies and TV shows on-demand. No more $7 M&M’s and Junior Mints either. The downside: people don’t leave the house much and you’re gonna miss going to see movies.

A company called Amazon delivers almost anything to our door in 24 hours or less. Everything from Tide detergent to a carburetor for an 1976 Ford Pinto and even prescription medicine is delivered for free. Literally anything. Same-day delivery is common. Don’t ask me how they do it. No clue.

We no longer have home phones, office phones, answering machines, fax machines or phone books. Long Distance calling is also long gone. You can call anywhere in the world for free.

In 2025 video conference calls replace face-to-face business meetings, which kinda stinks. Most people work from home in their day-jammies. You go months or years without seeing your coworkers. It’s kind of lonely sometimes and you’ll miss your friends at work. (Heads up, we are gonna really hate this in the future.)

There’s a new emerging tech called Artificial Intelligence or AI, for short. It’s hard to explain, but it has digested the entire internet and read pretty much every book on the planet. You can talk to it like a human. It answers with a human voice. Things like what was the weather on October 31, 2000? Or, what’s $9,236,452 x $14,509,346? It can instantaneously write a 50 page Term Paper on any subject and it’ll be perfect. It’ll probably replace millions of jobs. You might think about becoming an electrician or a plumber.

Gay marriage is a thing. You can same-sex marry in all 50 states and nobody cares anymore. If that bothers you, I suggest you give that one up cause it just doesn’t matter to future you-or anyone else.

Weed is legal recreationally in 24 states and medically in 38. Most major cities smell like a Grateful Dead show, especially New York and LA. Sounds crazy, but I smell more weed than cigarette smoke these days. Nobody smokes cigarettes anymore. Nobody.

Look, I know this all sounds completely insane, and honestly, if someone had told me all this back in 2000, I wouldn’t have believed them either. But here’s the thing—you’re going to adapt to all of it, just like everyone else. Some of this technology will make life incredibly convenient, and some of it will make you nostalgic for simpler times when people actually talked to each other at dinner instead of staring at their smartphones.

So buckle up, younger me. The next 25 years are going to be a wild ride full of things that seem impossible but become everyday reality. Stay curious, stay adaptable, and for the love of Pete, buy that Apple stock today.

So, what did I miss? Click below and tell me. I promise that you’ll hear back from me.

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