David Bosshart, CEO of Gottlieb Duttweiler Institute in Switzerland, addressed the Global Wellness Summit attendees, speaking about how fast-changing technology will shape our world in the coming years.

Bosshart said that the use of technology is moving us towards abundance and transcendence.

“With the rapid normalisation of the digital, we will become human beings again, as everything digital goes into the background,” he said. “We are going towards sort of a data Buddhism.”

Bosshart spoke of a new world that is about experiences rather than things, sharing rather than owning, software vs hardware, and real time vs wait time.

Algorithms, he said, know better who we are than we do, and are giving us hints of who we are, what we are and how we behave.

We all know the importance of listening to our customers, he said, and to listening to how we feel, but “can you listen to your data?” he asked.

“Listening to your data will be the key success factor over the coming years,” said Bosshart.

Design is also now driving change, and today’s design is made by devices, with coffee shops looking very similar to living rooms, offices, or airport lounges.

“It’s all converging very fast,” he said. “We need less and less space to be happy and to do whatever we want.”

And as data continues to grow in importance, we are faced with the ever-increasing problem of what to do with endless data.

“The only scarcity is the power of imagination,” said Bosshart. “Imagination is the ultimate survival kit.”

Bosshart also spoke about how augmented reality will create “personalised mass uniqueness,” and will open up possibilities for new realities for many, such as handicapped people being able to have the feeling of swimming in a lake.

“Augmented reality will mean my experience is different than your experience,” he said.

Our world is also shrinking, said Bosshart, and we are becoming more tribal. And we are moving towards algorhythmic humanism, where you need to listen to your data to optimise yourself.

“Evolution drives us, but we also want to drive evolution,” said Bosshart.

The digital age is also driving us to be more visual people, as we took more photos last year than we had in the whole history of humanity.

“The digital focus pushes an aesthetics convergence,” said Bosshart.

And we are connecting to nature with the help of data.

Bosshart concluded by looking at a model for wellness residences in 2030, where architecture reflects nature: swimming pools are designed to look like lakes, and buildings look like hills and mountains.