Imagine a world in which people live in information bubbles that echo what they believe and differing views are relegated to bubbles in which others live. You may say that this is the world in which we currently live, but take a moment to stretch your imagination. Imagine a future world in which geographical boundaries loose significance. Physical boundaries pertain to only those around you at any particular moment when you interact person-to-person, but those interactions are few and far between since most personal interaction is over the Internet. There are times in which you must move physically into someone else’s bubble, but that would be an experience similar to today’s trip to another country.

Governments reshape over time. Perhaps the country-based governments of today vanish or at least become insignificant. Each bubble has its own government, and since all individuals are like-minded, the individual governments move in predictable directions. Immigrants lose bonds between each other as they become emigrants to a bubble of like-minded people of all backgrounds. Each bubble forms its own security forces, but in this scenario, warfare changes. There is no longer a plot of land to conquer, to bomb to submission, to occupy. Cyber warfare becomes the norm. But, in this future there are reasons not to go to war. Trade is essential between bubbles. They rely on each other. Perhaps a conservative bubble handles most of the agriculture and a more liberal bubble, technology, and yet another, has rich space entrepreneurs in control of the weather satellites. They need to trade between them to survive.

This future scenario is not nirvana. The outcasts and the starving masses will be with us always. There will be humanitarian aid supplied through cooperation between the bubbles, but the poor masses will be those the information bubbles leave behind.

This future has possibilities for the writer. Imagine a security breach that threatens the security of one bubble and cyberwar ensues. What if there is an insurrection within a bubble? What would it look like? Could there be a future Romeo and Juliet as lovers from different bubbles?

I welcome your comments. Who knows, you may shape the future… of a new novel.