The future is going to be boring. The suburbanisation of the planet will continue, and the suburbanisation of the soul will follow soon after.

Ballard links a physical trend—suburban sprawl and the spread of standardized, car-centered landscapes—to a psychological one: the internalization of suburbia’s values of safety, predictability, and managed experience. Calling the future “boring” is less a casual complaint than a warning that modernity may replace drama and risk with controlled environments, consumer routines, and mediated sensation. The phrase “suburbanisation of the soul” suggests that homogenized spaces can produce homogenized desires, narrowing imagination and emotional range. In Ballard’s broader work, this kind of boredom is not inert; it can become volatile, breeding strange new pathologies and eruptions of violence or fantasy within apparently orderly settings.