man of tomorrow
Man of Tomorrow: A Species Still Learning to Tie Its Own Shoelaces
By Our World-Weary Correspondent in Residence
Geneva – While the rest of us were doom-scrolling through inflation charts and wondering whether our passports will expire before the next coup, the United Nations quietly unveiled its latest white paper: “The Man of Tomorrow: A Composite Portrait.” The document—authored by an inter-agency task force that apparently had nothing better to do—claims to have synthesized biometric data, purchasing patterns, TikTok dances, and a suspiciously large number of Spotify playlists into a single predictive avatar. Ladies and gentlemen, meet Tomorrow’s Man: 5’9″, 71 kg, brownish, mildly lactose-intolerant, and statistically likely to die within 3.7 km of a Starbucks.
Naturally, the world greeted this revelation with the solemnity it deserves. In Davos, venture capitalists began bidding on futures contracts in his hypothetical gut microbiome; in Lagos, meme accounts photoshopped him into traffic jams he will never personally endure; in Moscow, state TV declared the avatar “a CIA psy-op with gluten sensitivity.” Meanwhile, the avatar himself—rendered in soothing beige tones—smiled from promotional banners as if he’d already forgiven us for whatever we’re about to monetize out of him.
The global implications are, of course, staggering. Supply-chain executives from Rotterdam to Shenzhen are retooling logistics so that precisely one medium-soft hoodie follows our beige everyman from birth to biodegradable grave. The EU’s new “Right to Be Forgotten by Algorithms” directive had to be hastily amended after lawyers realized Tomorrow’s Man technically doesn’t exist yet; Brussels now grants him prenatal privacy rights, a bureaucratic first that will keep courts busy until the heat death of the eurozone. Over in Washington, bipartisan agreement was finally achieved on something: both parties agreed to blame the avatar for student-loan forgiveness, regardless of whether he ever enrolls.
Emerging markets view the avatar less as prophecy and more as a dare. Kenya’s Ministry of Digital Affairs launched a competing “Woman of Tomorrow” initiative, reasoning—correctly—that if the UN insists on making the future male, someone should at least ensure it’s underfunded. India’s tech hubs have already spun up six start-ups selling “personalized ayurvedic supplements for the doppelgänger you haven’t become,” while Brazil’s favelas run betting pools on which organ the avatar will sell first to keep up with his own subscription economy. (Current favorite: plasma, followed closely by dignity.)
All of which raises the eternal question: if we can model Tomorrow’s Man down to his retinal scan, why does Today’s Man still forget to back up his phone? The UN paper sidesteps the paradox by inserting a footnote: “Predictive fidelity declines sharply after breakfast.” Translation: once the avatar spills coffee on himself, the model reverts to historical averages—i.e., the same confused primates who invented both penicillin and parking tickets. The future, it turns out, is just the past with better branding.
Still, cynicism only gets you so far before marketing eats it alive. Multinationals have begun A/B testing empathy campaigns calibrated to the avatar’s projected serotonin levels; NGOs are petitioning for carbon offsets on his behalf even though he hasn’t exhaled once. And somewhere in a climate-controlled server farm, the real Man of Tomorrow is already being mined for engagement metrics, a recursive loop that would make Kafka cough up his morning espresso.
In the end, the joke isn’t on the avatar; it’s on the carbon-based focus groups who think they’re steering him. Tomorrow’s Man is less a messiah than a mirror—reflecting our desperate desire to outsource regret to someone who hasn’t had time to accumulate any. We built him from our data exhaust, handed him our neuroses like heirlooms, and then acted surprised when he turned out allergic to shellfish and commitment. If that isn’t the most human thing we’ve done since inventing war, I don’t know what is.
So here’s to the Man of Tomorrow: may he dodge our landmines, forgive our algorithms, and—if he’s half as smart as the spreadsheet says—change his name, his IP address, and his species before we finish uploading his childhood trauma to the blockchain. History will remember us kindly, if only because he’ll be too busy to sue.
