This is the point that, I think, will inform all my other predictions. The short version is this: The world will embrace the idea of being remote. It's been technically possible for a long time, but a non-starter in most companies due to company culture.

I'm wholly unsure about the direct effects on future travel. I think the state of world travel will return to normal, but it will take at least a year. Even after lockdowns end in most or all countries, people may still be semi-confined to their country for a longer period of time.

Many countries had very different outcomes as they tried to deal with COVID. It's not clear how that will play out. For example, what does reinstating travel look like between a country that fully contained the virus and a country where the virus spread wildly?

Working remotely doesn't mean losing your social life or being distant from the things you care about. On the contrary, it means more freedom. You can work at the company you want to without relocating. You can relocate to a locale you like better without leaving your job.

Remote work means decoupling work from locale.

For anyone who chooses you can also continue to work at an office in the city of your company. The remote trend doesn't mean you have to work remotely, it just means you can if you want to.

Some people really enjoy working form an office. Some do not. Now both types of person can have a more ideal work situation.

Big cities are a lot of fun—just not for everyone. San Francisco for instance is a notoriously bad city for raising children. However, many parents still choose to live in San Francisco because of the job market. If that job market detaches from the locale of San Francisco I predict a significant number of people will decide to move elsewhere.

My prediction is this—while many will choose to remain in dense cities some subset of the current residents will choose to move because moving does not mean living their job.

There may also be people that simply want are already living outside a city and commuting in. I expect that given the chance many of these people would work from home during the week and commute in occasionally for social events or other non-work activities.

Longer term I expect this dispersion to create downward pressure on property values in the most urbanized areas.

The world will continue to need to do business. Meetings are a big part of this. However, meetings can often be conducted remotely. This has been true for a while, but companies have not fully embraced remote meetings for cultural reasons—it's just not how business has been conducted in the past.

You may be thinking that conferencing—both video and audio—has been around for a while. Webex was around long before Zoom (indeed it was supposedly the genesis of Zoom), but there was still quite a lot of international travel strictly for the sake of meetings. My prediction is that this will change. Video conferencing is far cheaper in human time and monetary cost.

For companies interested in reducing costs without reducing productivity (read: all companies) this could be a significant boon.

Have you ever tried having out in VR? If not, you're missing out. VR has a lot of drawbacks but one area where it really excels is hangouts. Hanging out in VR is an order of magnitude more immersive than a video chat. It's of course not as good as in-person, but it's so much better than video that VR could find a very viable niche in a more remote world.

My completely-biased hope is that the coming decade will show us the first killer app for VR. My prediction is that that app will be related to hangouts. You don't need to solve VR locomotion, you just need people to be able to hang out and maybe do interesting VR stuff while their at it.