2035 – The Future Begins Today

What might an ordinary day in 2035 look like?

Sven Gábor Jánszky answers this question not with an abstract trend overview but with a concrete future scenario. In 2035 – The Future Begins Today he describes a possible everyday life in which personal AI systems, humanoid robots, advances in medicine and longevity research, and new forms of energy and production could have become commonplace.

According to the author and publisher, this is based on technologies, prototypes, research projects and corporate strategies that already exist today. The actual prediction therefore concerns not whether these technologies will exist, but which of them could become accessible to the mass market and part of everyday life by 2035.

This is precisely why the book interests the Future Skills Institut: not as a description of a certain future, but as a concrete scenario against which to test our current assumptions about work, learning and a good life.

1. The future begins long before it becomes everyday life

Many changes seem sudden, even though their technological foundations were visible years earlier. Artificial intelligence, humanoid robotics, brain–computer interfaces and new approaches in medicine and energy are currently at very different stages of maturity. Whether and when they will reach most people's everyday lives remains open.

Jánszky's approach is therefore interesting: he asks not only what technology is possible, but how several developments could reinforce one another. Personal AI changes everyday life differently when robots simultaneously take over physical tasks, medical advances extend life stages and new economic models emerge.

For future capability, this means we need not predict every individual technological development correctly. More important is the ability to recognise connections, regularly review assumptions and adjust our own course.

2. What if AI changes not just jobs, but paid work itself?

The book's scenarios for the world of work are particularly far-reaching. Jánszky explores a future in which AI and robotics take over a growing share of today's tasks, potentially making conventional paid employment scarcer or fundamentally reorganising it.

This need not happen. But even the possibility changes the Future Skills question.

Usually, that question is: What abilities do I need to have a good job tomorrow as well? This question remains important. It is precisely why our JobRadar 2040examines what new roles of human responsibility might emerge and which abilities make them easier to access.

But if technological productivity eventually does mean that less regular paid work is needed from some people, a second question arises:

What sustains my life when work no longer sustains everything it does today?

3. Work gives us far more than income

For many people today, work structures the day. It creates contacts, recognition, tasks, development, identity and a sense of being needed. Less paid work would therefore not automatically be just a financial issue.

One of the visions of the future surrounding 2035 therefore highlights activities that often receive less recognition in the traditional employment model: caring, education, art, community, neighbourhoods, nursing, parenting, volunteering and local responsibility.

This directly touches our research on Lebensfähig 2040. There we ask: what other supports does a good life need if paid work partly loses its established structuring influence?

The answer cannot simply be ‘more leisure’. Leisure alone generates neither meaning nor relationships nor self-efficacy. People need opportunities to structure their days, contribute, connect and experience themselves as capable of making a difference.

4. The decisive question about the future is therefore a human one

We do not know today whether humanoid robots will actually live in many households by 2035, whether nuclear fusion will be economically relevant or whether new income models will emerge.

But the scenario reveals another question: How dependent is my current way of life on conditions that could change?

If much of our identity, social contacts, daily structure and self-worth depends on paid work, a changing world of work can reach far beyond our careers. Future readiness then means more than operating new technology. It also means being able to reshape meaning, relationships, structure and possibilities for action under changed conditions.

What we take from this

2035 is a deliberately provocative vision of the future. It is not an empirical prediction of what will certainly be reality in nine years. Individual developments may arrive sooner, later or follow an entirely different course.

That is precisely why the book works as a thought experiment.

For the Future Skills Institut, the relevant question is not: Is Jánszky right about every prediction?

But: If even some of these developments occur, which abilities and life structures will help people remain satisfied and able to act?

Perhaps preparing for the future therefore means more than learning to work with new technologies. Perhaps we also need to learn to build a good life on several pillars so that it remains supported even when one changes.

What function does paid work fulfil in my life today – beyond income – and where could that function be fulfilled in another way?

Context: This 3-Minute Insight summarises selected publicly described ideas and scenarios from the book in our own words and places them in the context of the Future Skills Institut's research questions. The visions presented are the author's scenarios and forecasts, not established facts about what 2035 will actually look like. This article does not replace reading the original.

Source: Sven Gábor Jánszky (2026): 2035 – The Future Begins Today. Forward Verlag, ISBN 978-3-98755-208-3. Further information: Official book website ↗ · Public interview on key propositions about the future ↗