The Year Ahead

What we believe is next for culture, technology, and how we live

Your email may arrive in fragments. If invited, choose “View entire message.” For a fuller experience, visit Hyperreality—where the story opens beautifully, especially on desktop.

This letter comes to you from Scotland, where the wind off the coast carries a particular kind of cold and the rain arrives in sheets, relentless. We are visiting family for a few days before spending Christmas back in England, which is to say: we are in that peculiar suspended state between places, between one year and the next. We have already seen family and old friends, met new ones, reacquainted ourselves with cousins and second cousins, those lovely, distant relations who arrive bearing stories and laughter. We have already eaten too much – canapés at holiday parties, hors d'oeuvres passed on silver trays – had one too many glasses of wine, opened Christmas cards in the warmth whilst the wind howled outside. We have stayed cosy, relaxed in ways we forgot were possible, watched holiday films (When Harry Met Sally for old time's sake, because some things never lose their charm). We have stopped in at cosy village pubs with low ceilings and crackling fires. And all of this before the holidays truly begin next week. Tomorrow is the shortest day of the year – winter solstice – and then, after that, the days will only get longer once again. There is something in this, some quiet promise. A feeling, perhaps, of hopefulness for the new year.

This week's letter is the seventh instalment of Notes Between Us – a space where we share what's been capturing our attention: cultural moments and ideas, fleeting observations, things worth pausing for. Our personal marginalia, the notes we'd scribble in the margins of our shared life. This edition will be a little different. In it, we'll both discuss what we believe will be next for the new year – gleaned from our travels around the internet, instinct, experience – including shifts in how we build trust, seek wellness, and remix the past into something newly resonant.

The year ahead promises to be one defined by trust and authenticity. Consumers, increasingly sceptical of polished, inauthentic content, will favour brands and creators who demonstrate a certain radical honesty, a willingness to be transparent. Trust becomes the primary currency in online interactions – which is to say, we are moving past performance.

Wellness, too, is being rewired. Health routines will shift beyond the general and the aspirational towards something more precise: data-driven, science-backed personal health management using apps and devices that know us, perhaps, better than we know ourselves.

And then there is nostalgia, which continues its hold but not merely as re-release or recycling. This is nostalgia remixed – old intellectual property reimagined to create experiences that feel both comforting and fresh, speaking across generations in a language that is somehow both familiar and new.

What follows are our predictions for the year ahead: shifts in technology, culture, travel, fashion, and the quiet ways we're reclaiming presence in an always-on world.

Here’s a collection of the meaningful and the fleeting – small moments of thought, art, and life to carry with you into the new year.