I'm reading Alastair Reynolds Revelation Space series in a bit of a random order. I've just finished Chasm City. As I read, I find myself thinking that the characters are humans in an unusual setting. Whereas I think that our future is that we'll become less human. Our brains haven't changed dramatically for thousands of years. That's going to change, and change rapidly.

In sci-fi books, people tend to have bodies and brains and move around. Why do people move? A person's brain doesn't leave its skull (unless something horrible has happened). People move around so that their sensors can gather certain information, in other words, to experience things. If those sensations can be transmitted, then there's no need to move.

Some people will want to augment their evolved capabilities. At the moment such people use laptops and mobile phones and enormous data centres run by Google etc. A future person may choose to extend their intelligence and emotional intelligence by perhaps inhabiting several data centres around the world. This takes up a lot of resources, space and energy. This mode of life would only be available to the rich. Who would become rich? Why, those who have extended their intelligence and emotional intelligence of course!