On the negative side, easy access to biotech tinkering equipment has lead to bioengineered plagues deployed by useful idiots aligned to a number of different causes, from radical religion through to anti-globalisation activists trying to shut down transcontinental megacorps. In response, people rarely travel from their state-provided sealed communities, interacting with other communities and working via full immersion A/VR (via direct-brain interface).
The elite (now a small group, almost a separate species with little-to-no social mobility) roam more freely around the globe, protected by state of the art biotech immune systems from local microbes. Emphasis on decision making in person and the courage of the top management in allowing themselves to be exposed to the world helps to keep the lid on a popular revolt, combined with a level of total surveillance worse than could have been imagined before the brain interface was the universal method of working and communicating. A person's conscious and unconscious biases can be measured, then targeted reality programs subtly change the way information is presented to sculpt more complacent personalities.
Well, that was less optimistic than planned...
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