Imagine strolling through a breathtaking store with beautiful groceries. There is so much to choose from – yet, you can simply advance from one segment to the next without spending more than one second. You find yourself in the veggie section. The textures and colors are incredibly lively and you can even smell the freshness of the produce. You remind yourself, that you only came here for some bread.

You are a vegan, and nutrition is important to you. You like sourdough bread with very long dough rest made from locally produced and freshly milled wholegrain flour because you know from experience that this kind of bread does you well, and you also like the intense, nutty taste of it. Your personalized nutrition guide came up with many more factors you should consider for optimal nutrition, you just can’t remember all of them. Thankfully, you don’t have to. 

You look through the in-store bakery and see the products that suit your requirements – the rest of the assortment is half-transparent. Your tailored nutritional recommendations are already linked with the store, so the days of reading labels for hours are over. You are also able to easily compare the prices of products and read reviews from other virtual shoppers. Thank you AI – you think to yourself – for helping me take optimal decisions, quickly!

It’s the year 2032. As anticipated by scientists, global warming is accelerating and needs to be stopped radically. For that reason, AI highlights regenerative products with a green color and hides destructive products by default. Our environment is important to you too, and you feel very grateful that making sustainable choices became much easier. You decided on a dark sour-dough baguette made from Swiss spelt flour because state-of-the-art tests on your microbiome showed that your body reacts better to spelt rather than rye. 

You have found what you were looking for and a pop-up emerges in your field of view. AI noticed that your refrigerator is almost empty. Apparently, sour-cream butter made from the milk of free-grazing cows in the Swiss Alps aids the digestion of your baguette. You dismiss the message because you are invited to a friend’s place for brunch and she already organized spreads.

You take off your glasses and exit the metaverse. 10 minutes later, the freshly-baked baguette arrives at your friend’s place and a fraction of your Ethereum coin is deducted from your virtual wallet. You think back to 2020 when people were fighting over toilet paper in the hallways of Coop and Migros. You leave your house with a smile and slowly get ready for the real world and a Sunday morning with friends.

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An utopia written by Lena Götsch in January 2023

Source Picture: Packaging in the Metaverse: food for thought | Packly Blog