Michael is a good and successful Manager at a property management company in the Midlands, UK. He shares a home with his partner of four years, which is not far from where he went to school, at forty he has a prior marriage behind him and while he has no children he does have two cats. He works hard and enjoys the comfort and abundance associated with his job. As a Property Manager he drives a fair bit and is enjoying his new Jaguar as well as the looks and comments he gets from friends and neighbours. While he generally stays in the UK for holidays he's been to the south of Spain and Florida in the US. And though he's not interested in new and different places he is very interested in the newest, smallest and best new gadgets; especially computers and computer games; and the escapism they allow without actually going somewhere.

Michael's recent cancer scare has left him shaken but profoundly impressed with current medical technology. Painkiller implants allow him to live a normal, healthy life, whilst gaming implants allow him to interact with virtual environments and virtual friends around the world, although his wife is less than pleased about his "virtual mistresses". Still based in the British Midlands, thanks to leaps in communications technology, and the new ability to make "virtual visits", his property business has expanded into the USA. He drives a Jaguar multi-fuel SUV; very efficient for everyday use, but inefficiently fun at the weekends!

Following the simultaneous costly split with his virtual mistress and the death of their cats, Michael and his wife decided to have a baby five years ago (using an artificial womb, given his wife's age) which has given them a completely new focus. Participation in virtual worlds is still important, but as well as escapism they now also use them as part of their child's education. The child has also brought them more into contact with a broader range of 'real' people, of a generally younger generation. His world is governed by a new fusion of government and major corporations, into new entities which combines control over key assets and regulation with commercial activity.

Yes, we made it but only just. Government is unrecognizable - the unprecedented need for coordinated action, both in terms of funding and sharing technology and in terms of developing and imposing common global rules (to set emissions standards, levy carbon taxes etc.) has driven the creation of a world government that has started to have overall control in a whole range of global areas - law, tax, water, standard food, energy, public transport etc. - and there is a global (virtual) currency, the Universal Credit, in operation. Not all countries are as fully signed up to this as others, so there are major legacy issues to deal with, and there are still lots of compromises in place causing tension. There are several huge commercial joint venture organizations that are part of the world government, and are regulated by it e.g. TataTesco is the major player in global food production. Everybody has free access to a basic level of services (water, energy, public transport, internet) but consumption above the standard level - either in quantity or quality - has to be paid for. We are most embarrassed by the time that it took to deal with sub-standard living conditions, as there are many people who still remember being brought up in extreme poverty; we werenit very swift to deal with climate change either, but we have at least developed the technology to fix that damage. Our aspirations have become colored by the understanding of the need for balance; focus is on human-machine advancement, robotics and artificial intelligence, and developing faster space drives for the unmanned probes that are being sent out further and further into space.