2020 vision: A day in your life in 10 years time

It Is 2020, iPhones appear ancient and Tweeting seems as old-fashioned as sending a fax.

As we start one new decade, the science experts at BBC Focus magazine have revealed how technological advances will be shaping our lives as the next one comes into play.

So sit back and prepare to be amazed by a day in your life in 10 years' time...

6:45am

Your alarm clock goes off 15 minutes early because it is linked to the internet, and traffic reports predict delays due to a train strike.

The internet radio station streams the same music to every listener, but the HomeDJ service means that news, traffic and weather are local to you, and can be customised to provide the level of detail you want.

When you leave home, you carry on listening in your car - the first internet car radio was showcased at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas back in 2009.

GPS data automatically selects the most relevant traffic news stream for you and updates your sat-nav.

7:45am

For breakfast, you grab an apple from a FrootStore bag. This is a plastic bag from the supermarket impregnated with a compound that inhibits ethylene, the naturally produced gas compound that encourages fruit to ripen.

The FrootStore holds everything from apples to avocados in a preripe condition. When you want to eat them, you take them out and put them in a FrootRipe bag, which emits ethylene, for a few hours.

It means every apple is in perfect condition when you bite into it, so there is much less waste.

And the core goes into a back door composter. By opting for a two-thirds size wheelie bin, you have saved 20% on your council tax bill.

7:50am

Your journey to work is by car - the public transport infrastructure hasn't improved much in the last decade.

It's now almost impossible to buy a new car that isn't a hybrid, uses regenerative braking (which charges the battery as you brake) and smart idling (it cuts the engine if you stop for more than a few seconds).

The hybrid revolution started with the Toyota Prius back in 1997. A report published in 2009 predicted that 35% of cars made in 2025 will be electric - 25% will be hybrids and 10% purely electric.

Service stations now have fastcharge points. But it's bad news if you still have an old gas-guzzler - rumour has it petrol could soon break the £4.50 per litre barrier.

9am

Fewer people spend all their working day in an office now, with many companies ditching call centres for distributed Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) systems.

Calls are routed to individual operators around the country via internet data lines, meaning that many of us can work from home, with flexible working hours.

Figures from the Office for National Statistics in 2005 showed how workers had already started migrating out of the office.

Back then, 3.1 million Brits worked mainly from home, up from 2.3 million in 1997.

You've driven into town today for a meeting with your project team at a coffee shop - a venue that has become an increasingly important part of working life.


Many cafes are now making clever use of acoustic materials that make the music loud in the public areas but quieter in the discreet booths.

This makes it easier to talk in the booths, and harder for others to eavesdrop on confidential conversations.

3pm

You spend all afternoon trying to get a copy of a controversial biography of the Chinese premier, hard copies of which were banned outright in China.

The electronic version you downloaded won't play and the web filter in the cafe's Wi-Fi connection is blocking forums discussing China's censorship of the world wide web. As China's economy has grown over the past decade, its attempts to control the internet have become more sophisticated.

Filters that block content the superpower objects to are being installed in applications and even hardware.

Eventually you send a carefully-worded email that finds its way past the filters to a colleague in Finland who sends you a link to a file-sharing website. It might work - once you get home.

5pm

On the way home you stop off at a pharmacy to pick up a FluCheck which you use to swab the inside of your nose. The single-use device detects the pres-ence of antigens on flu virus particles.

It takes just 20 minutes for the "lab-on-a-chip" to give you a result.

Back in 2009, to diagnose something like swine flu required a sample being sent off to a lab. But in 2020 super-fast diagnoses are common for lots of conditions, including prostate cancer, hepatitis, TB and diabetes.

6:30pm

All the checkouts at your local supermarket are self-service, apart from one "assisted checkout", intended for customers with disabilities, which is manned on demand. Back in 2009, a Tesco store in Northampton became the first completely self-service supermarket.

Most food is now labelled with "food miles" - some products even have a "carbon foodprint" indicating the total carbon emitted during both production and transportation.

6:45pm

Dinner is Bosnian meatballs with kljukusa because Jamie Oliver is currently touring Central Europe for his latest video podcast.

Several broadcasters now transmit programmes simultaneously through the aerial and the internet. Commercial TV revenues continue to fall as fewer people are prepared to sit through live adverts any more.

The line between the internet and TV began to blur in 2009, when the number of videos watched online increased by 47% in a year.

7:30pm

You check your LifeSaver account, which has all the audio and video you uploaded today, recorded by a camera built into your glasses. LifeSaver picks out the most significant moments and sends out a video stream to everyone signed up to receive them.

Lord Stephen Fry has three hours of LifeSaver video for today - or you can catch the weekly summary on the Celebrity LifePeeks website. You also catch up on today's news on your e-reader.

11pm

As you snuggle down in bed, your iPillow plays the next chapter of your current audiobook through flat speakers embedded inside it. The pillow also adjusts the volume based on your activity and posture - it even switches to gentle music when it senses you are nearly asleep.

11:30pm

As you sleep, wind and wave power supply electricity to the National Grid. Some of this pumps water into reservoirs in the recently opened hydroelectric power stations in Scotland, proposed in 2009. Tomorrow, this water will feed electricity into the National Grid when everyone switches on their kettles and toasters.

Combined with the photovoltaic cells you installed on your roof three years ago, more than 15% of your electricity now comes from green sources.

Thanks to your smart meter you can keep tabs on your total electricity consumption - having the TV on standby is a thing of the past.