My novel has two timelines. One around 2001 and the other is 2078. The interactions in the later timeline has character interactions in a single, isolated environment (a house in the middle of no where, that has not changed since 2001). I now realise that maybe this isnt a problem with the setting. But I'm having issues properly depicting a future world in such an isolated area. The protagonist in that timeline has to be a conduit to the futuristic world outside, but I'm not sure what that world would look like or be like. Or does the changes in the world need to be shown since that single setting is unchanged? Any ideas?
What are you trying to say about the future? That will probably be your starting point, to determine what you need to depict. That nothing has changed? That everything has changed except this one place? Why would that be, if that's the case?
60 years from now? Probably not enough of a change to go overboard. When I'm doing similar I look back the same number of years and consider the changes to now. You'll find that pretty much all noticeable changes relate to technology.
Technological improvements are made at an increasing rate. If you think back fifty nine years, it was 1960. Nobody had ever left the Earth, there were no mobile phones, computing was in its infancy (certainly no Internet or home computers), paper records and typewriters were how the world was run, medicine had only recently found antibiotics. You need to come up with much bigger changes to our lives than that. I'd suggest searching the net for ideas - there's bound to be lots out there. Then think how you'd have found them out in 1960. Then wonder who you'll find them out in 2078. But ultimately, are you trying to give us glimpses of what the future holds or is that just the backdrop to your tale?
Is the house lived in? Think about the radical changes in our home lives since 1960. Drop an Alexa in a living room back then and people would think it was magic. Has there been a resurgence in rural living or is the countryside in even deeper decay?
The interesting thing about the future is that there's always room to get really, really creative with how you portray it. Of course, there is such a thing as anachronisms, especially when jumping forward so many years ahead, but there's where you have to limit yourself. Of course, the real question you have to ask yourself is what are you trying to portray with that kind of future. Decadence, such as what's portrayed in Logan's Run or Brave New World? Decay, a la 1984? A bit of both, with a grounded portrayal of a future environment being wedged next to a hyper-futuristic utopia, like Blade Runner? Of course, since the story as a whole is contained to an isolated location, like you said, most of that portrayal will naturally have to arrive through dialogue. Telling rather than showing is just as difficult as the alternative, but so long as you have your basis, it will naturally flow from there.
