Softlight Earth
Softlight Earth followed the same history as real life until 2049 CE. A large amount of land became owned by a few large tech companies, and this land was turned into smart cities, communities where a private corporation could control every aspect of life in order to test new technologies with less regulatory and market pressure. At the same time, climate change continued and accelerated. Approximately 25% of the landmass present at the turn of the century was submerged by 2080 CE. Some coastal cities were replaced by floating cities. Declining air quality and smog meant that masks with filters were necessary in many places.
Softlight Corp.
Softlight Corp. was one such corporation that ventured into city building. Specializing in cybernetics, they developed the Softlight Module System, a device that connects to a user's nervous system in order to enhance them physically, mentally, or otherwise.
Gridspace
Discovered by Softlight scientists, gridspace was a set of fields overlaid with the known universe, but they would only interact with matter in very specific circumstances. This property, among others, made it particularly suited to storing information. Since its discovery, all cybernetics of the 21st century were built on gridspace technology, as it enabled more complex data processing than possible with classical computing, AI/ML, or non-gridspace quantum computing.
Transhumanism and Posthumanism
Powered by gridspace technology, augmentations, artificial intelligence, and androids became commonplace in the latter part of the 22nd century. Non-human minds were everywhere, some human-like, some alien.