There’s gotta be some more obvious way to identify old threads! SuperNova, you freaked me out when I quickly scrolled through and saw messages by WallyM7 and P(mumble,mumble).
STILL can’t get good TexMex in Boston!!
I started this thread a little over 4 years ago. Lessee how we’re doing:
What with the new century almost (only 13 months) upon us, seems like a good time to make our predictions for the next hundred years. I’m ignoring global nuclear war (possible) and planet killing meteors (unlikely) which make predictions moot. I put this in GD in hopes that it’ll generate a little discussion.
So, In the next 100 years:
- People will routinely use genetic engineering to tailor their offspring. Strangely enough, most kids will look just like their parents. Only bigger.
Coming but still a long way to go.
2. There will be Female and Black presidents of the US. They won’t be any better than the other boobs.
Looks good so far. Best bets to date are Colin Powell and Hillary. On both counts.
3. Cloning of people will never become popular but some twit will try it…and be disapointed when the result isn’t him.
Still coming.
- Fundies and other religious cranks will be just as nutz and even more numerous. Somebody will start a new religion that is so absurd that no sane person could take it seriously. By 2099 it will be adopted by 20% of the Earth’s population.
First part has certainly proved out so far.
5. By 2099 the average man in the street will not be able to name more than two 20th Century Presidents (FDR and Kennedy). (Just like, today, the only ones he can name from the 19th are Lincoln and…uh…wotsisname…Jefferson).
Only one so far and already best forgotton.
6. Somebody will pop a nuke in the US. (Popping a nuke somewhere in the world is a sure thing).
Becoming more likely by the minute.
7. Tobacco Prohibition will be instituted in the US. Alcohol Prohibition will be reinstituted in the US. The French will still think we’re idiots.
Any place inside that you can still smoke besides yer own house? No big push for Alcohol prohibition so far. The French, mirablie dictu, live up to expectations.
8. Man will go to the moon but will not go to Mars. The next person to step on the moon will not be (a) male, or (b) Caucasian. We will launch an interstellar probe.
Still holding up, Dubya’s fantasies and political hype notwithstanding.
9. In 2099 the most powerful nation on earth will be China. Number Two will be India. Number 3 will be Europe which will include Russia and the Ukraine. The US may make the top 10 (but only after we merge with Canada). The Brits and French will still refuse to adopt a common language.
Still holding up.
10. Bioelectric implants in humans will become commonplace. Everybody will be online all the time.
Still holding up and coming sooner than you think.
11. The government will know where everybody is and what they are doing all the time but won’t admit it. Every human being will have a permanent ID number.
So…yer car rental company uses GPS to mail you speeding tickets? And Big Brother won’t? Heh.
12. Somebody will discover or invent something that changes everything and knocks all predictions into a cocked hat.
So far nothing like that 'cept 9/11 which certainly changed the rules here in God’s Country.
13. Some of the people who post to this thread will be around in 2099 to do it again.
Not me tho…I’ve seen 80 and decline to participate. Given that the medical care to support extreme old age will soon be available only to the very rich it’s likely that average life expectancy will decline.
14. We will not all become vegetarians. People will still eat things that are bad for them because it is fun.
Still holding up… If we quit eating meat, the cows win.
15. Tigers, Swordfish and Network Television will become extinct. Soap operas will not.
Still coming. Network TV particularly. That continues to fragment and deteriorate daily.
16. World War III.
Not on the horizon so far. Gotta have faith in Dubya’s Jihad For Jesus though. He may still pull it off.
17. English (albeit in a form that we would have trouble recognizing today) will be the common language of Homo Sapiens. The French will be pissed.
More likely than ever as the Net becomes universal.
18. We will not be fried by global warming or frozen by the next ice age. People will still get elected by claiming that it’s gonna happen any minute.
Still waiting for a straight answer from somebody without a political axe to grind.
19. The Big One will hit California. Nobody will move away.
Still waiting.
20. We will not discover extraterrestrial intellience.
And the terrestrial kind is getting thinner on the ground.
21. Harpo will still be funny.
HONK! Still right on target. New DVDs issues of all thirteen films coming out this yer.
22. PCs, silicon chips, cell phones, fax machines, analog TVs, CDs & recording tape, piston engines, propeller driven aircraft & newspapers will exist only in museums. Kids will be bored to tears when they get dragged there to see them.
Tape is about gone. Hard disk tech is getting to the point where everybody will be able to lug their own library around with them. Online news is already better than the TV kind and has better comics too.
- Teenagers will still be a pain in the ass. They will still enjoy it. Parents will still be convinced that the world is going to hell in a handbasket.
Still safe.
24. We will find ways to cure or control AIDS, cancer and the common cold. Something worse will come along.
Still coming and becoming more likely every day. SARS with an attitude any time now.
25. We will give up on trying to find something to replace books. 95% of what gets published will still be crap.
Remember e-books?
26. There will be even more advertising in every aspect of life and we will never find a cure for spam.
I wish I had bet money on this one.
27. Everybody but the Jews will forget about Hitler. Until the next time.
Or make up a new one to justify his oil wars.
28. George Lucas will not finish the second Star Wars Trilogy.
Well…it’s the thought that counts. He did. It sucked. We’ll always have Hobbits.
- Shakespeare will still be a popular source for movies and the only 19th Century work that will still be read by the general public will be Conan Doyle’s “Sherlock Holmes”.
Still holding up. Nobody read Melville then, fewer do now.
30. In 2099 more people will visit Graceland than the Viet Nam Memorial.
Looks more like nobody will visit either one.
31. Everybody will have cable or satellite TV (or the equivalent). 95% of the prgramming will still be crap. Kids will be able to name more cast members of “The Brady Bunch” than US Presidents.
Read my lips: Reality TV.
32. The Red Sox will not win the World Series. A Japanese team will. Somebody will hit 80 homers. Twice. The second time nobody will notice.
I did bet money on this one. 
33. You still won’t be able to get good TexMex in Boston.
sigh. My kid moved to Boston and discovered Indian Restaurants. Still can’t get good Tex-Mex though.
34. Emma Peel will still be the sexiest woman of all time.
Uma Thurman? UMA THURMAN!! Are you insane??
35. The United States will discover that there are people living South of the Equator.
And ignore them.
36. We will not find a way to eradicate rats, cockroaches, mosquitoes or telemarketers.
Add spammers and Fundies.
37. Paper money will disappear. Vending machines will take $10.00 coins.
Dollar Coins would be a lot more popular if they quit putting ugly wimmin on 'em. Holding out for the Catherine Zeta-Jones sawbuck coin.
38. Nobody will understand “Seinfeld”, “All in the Family” or “Saturday Night Live”.
Read my lips: Reality TV.
39. “Saturday Night Live” will still not be funny.
Still right on.
40. “Rocky & Bullwinkle” will be.
The series, not the movie, you twits.
41. The most common response to Time Magazine’s List of the 100 most influential people of the 20th Century will be “Who??”
Who??
- Somebody will find the flaw in Einstein’s Theory of Relativity and a situation where e doesn’t always equal m c squared.
Stephen Hawking sez black holes will evaporate eventually as the Uncertainty Principle allows particles to exceed the speed of light and escape. Or something like that.
- There will be more lawyers.
Heh…still right on the nose.
44. Rock stars will still dress funny and you won’t be able to understand the words.
And you won’t be able to tell 'em from Country Stars.
45. Nobody will remember Elton John and everybody will remember Duke Ellington.
Elton who?
46. There will not be resort hotels in space or permanent residents on the moon. There will be privately owned and operated space craft.
Still looks good.
47. We will not discover the secret of immortality or extend the average lifespan beyond 100 years.
Looking better all the time.
48. Traffic will get worse.
Grrrrrrr…I hate being that right.
49. A kiss will still be a kiss, a sigh will still be a sigh and the fundamental things will still apply, as time goes by.
Yup.
- Fighting ignorance will take longer than we thought.
But it’s at least a lot easier to find.
Ready? Go.
“Abortion-on-demand” will be made obsolete by artificial wombs & embryo transplants. Some will still have them but both the pro-choice & pro-life movements will severely dwindle.
Fringe religious & political communities will spring up & seem rather successful but they will not be able to grow beyond county-type boundaries. There will be no successful completely “Christian” or “Marxist” or “libertarian” state.
The sex-worker & live actor porn industry will die out due to design-your-own mate virtual-reality porn. Sex crimes of rape & child molestation will be punished much more harshly as rapists & pedophiles could well have acted out in VR situations.
By 2099, CGI literature programs will allow kids to watch a fully faithful version of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein with Boris Karloff and other such classics using whatever old actors are on the programs.
Every movie ever made & every book ever written will be downloadable & for sale if there is a buyer.
Some authentic Biblical artifact will be discovered.
Scientology will become a popular religion when the fees are reduced/eliminated & a more solid God-concept is instituted & the L Ron persoanlity cult aspects are removed.
Mainline Protestant churches will split, probably over gay ordination. And churches on both sides will coalesce into two main coalitions- liberal & conservative that will almost transcend denominationalism.
Eastern Orthodoxy will grow in the US to become 15-20% of the US C’tian population.
So how are we doing so far?
I don’t know about us. I personally find these sort of lists (wry observations couched as predictions which are used to “poke fun” at alleged human foibles) less amusing to read that I think I did in 1999 (when the OP started this, case ya didn’t notice).
Well, of the original list:
- There will be Female and Black presidents of the US. They won’t be any better than the other boobs.
Has been demonstrated to be at least half right, and I give current trends think its clear that the second half will almost surely also hold by 2099. Although what could be considered in the category of “the other boobs” has been substantially altered.
Meanwhile
- George Lucas will not finish the second Star Wars Trilogy.
and the first part of
- The Red Sox will not win the World Series. A Japanese team will. Somebody will hit 80 homers. Twice. The second time nobody will notice.
have been proven false. The rest are pending.
Hmmm.
1 Yeah, but they won’t be bigger. They’ll use genetic engineering to make them smarter, more emotionally healthy, physically healthy, and hopefully pro-social.
4 Disagree. Religion seems to be on the decline everywhere. The questions we used to need religion to answer are now answerable by science. Not sure if its true but I thought I read even among muslim immigrants to europe (where religion is extremely important in their homeland) by the 2nd generation people are pretty secular.
6 Yeah probably. Not sure who though. Islamic extremists, white nationalists, or communists. Speaking of which, I see a resurgence of communism coming this century.
7 Tobacco yes, alcohol no.
8 Disagree. By 2099 we will probably have colonies all over the solar system.
9 Disagree. China will be 1, US will be 2. Not sure who will be 3 since Europe will still be separate countries. Maybe India by that point.
11 We pretty much have that now.
14 I think meat eating will be seen the way we look at slavery now, once we have technology to create cruelty free meats on a wide scale. Maybe some cuts of steak will still be from animals and I am sure hipsters will prefer animal grown meat, but most people will switch to lab grown meat.
16 Not sure. With nukes and economic interdependence, I don’t think the world wants WW3.
17 By 2099 instant language translation will have been around for decades. It already exists in limited forms. By 2099 the world may have invented another universal language that is easier to translate.
18 We won’t be fried by global warming, but it’ll cause trillions of dollars in economic damage and massive refugee issues.
24 Yeah we will cure them, but that doesn’t mean something worse will come. The world isn’t out to get us.
34 Nah.
36 We can already eradicate mosquitos, it just costs too much and we don’t care (or want to try it).
37 The black market will still require untraceable means of currency. Maybe something like bitcoins will replace money.
43 Robot lawyers.
47 We won’t discover the secret to true immortality, but human lifespan and healthspan may increase by 20 years. So a 95 year old in 2099 may have the health and life expectancy of a 75 year old does now.
48 Disagree. Self driving cars will make traffic much easier. The transition to work from home, advances in delivery services, at home 3d printing of goods and automation means fewer people will need to drive.
Harpo?
Curly is funnier than Harpo.
Nyuk-nyuk-nyuk-nyuk-nyuk.
Who was posting as “System” back then?