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At some point in the near future, perhaps as close as the 2030's, the "R" part of the GNR revolution -- AI and Robotics -- will "snap" and grow beyond meaningful measurement by humans. (G=genetics, N=nanotech) The full GNR revolution is characterized as "The Singularity" by futurists such as Ray Kurzweil. This "snap" subset I will be discussing happens in the worlds of manufacturing and servicing -- making things and making things happen. When these activities become +90% cyber controlled -- think driverless cars and completely automated factories then the snap has happened.
This becomes interesting story telling and newsworthy because what people will do when the snap happens is going to be dramatically different from today, and because of that the aspirations of people are going to have to change dramatically. "Get a job!" is going to become an irrelevant curse. (More on this in my essay on how humans will stay enfranchised when getting a job is no longer possible.)
Note that the different aspects of the GNR revolution are interconnected but they will evolve at different rates. Thus, the aspect of when human consciousness starts merging and becoming more and more cyber is a different issue than the one I'm discussing here. (exploring getting human consciousness into cyber is covered here) This one is about the making and servicing of real stuff in the physical world, and about what the humans that are still mostly in their human bodies will be doing when those duties are being handled mostly by cybers.
Definitions: The self-aware entities that will come out of a combination of robotics, computers and data communications networks I will call "cyber" or "creations". Cyber by this definition is self-aware entities that exist within the global networks of computers and communications. With time self-aware standalone entities, robots in the classical sense, will also be developed and become widespread. These standalone entities I will sometimes distinguish as creations. They will connect easily with the cyber network ecosystem and this ecosystem consisting of both network and standalone will be directly controlling most aspects of manufacturing and service activities.
Back to humans: Without harsh reality forcing them to engage in productive activities that benefit the community most of their waking time, many people will travel many roads not previously taken. The diverse roads of being a dilettante (in a general meaning of the word, not applying to just art) will open up and be heavily populated. Various humans will become very good at a diverse range of activities, but those activities won't be making them, or the community, a living. Others will get hedonistic in many ways. And many will become Rebels Without... With actually... a Cause. They will rail against the system in many ways, but much of that railing will be insignificant in that it is railing about molehills, not mountains. And because this is a prosperous world, people can mix and match these many paths.
A few will maintain the self-discipline to remain ambitious: meaning they want to, and will do, things that marshal a lot of material, cyber, and human resource and change the real world around them in ways that affect many people. This will not be a common path, and it will be less and less followed as the cybers do more and more. It will be less and less followed because there will be so few compelling reasons to do so. It will be hard. It will be hard to get tangible results. There will be little recognition or compensation for doing so. So... why not rail over molehills? It's a lot easier!
This is a series of essays about what this kind of "post-snap world" will be like... for many kinds of humans.