The Way the Future Was, 2002.

• [dd/mm/yy] is when the sooth was first penned.

  Post mortem comments added as and when.[dd/mm/yy]

Probable, with a guess at the date.

• 2002, third or fourth quarter: As the monsoon rains dissipate, India and Pakistan clash on a large scale with conventional forces. Neither side detonates any of their nukes as a part of the conflict. (The USA remains the only country to have perpetrated the particular Crime Against Humanity of deploying nuclear weapons of indiscriminate killing and mass destruction against centres of civilian population.)[02/06/02]

  That one was mostly a swipe at the USA and didn't happen - in this timeframe anyhow.[08/04/02]

• 2003, first or second quarter: the US with a token contingent of troops from other countries invades Iraq. (For a more precise date I'd go for Feb 15th.) A victory is declared three or four months later after Saddam Hussein disappears. The "The War Against Terrorism" (TWAT) continues unabated since invading Iraq solves nothing.[12/05/02]

  Not so far off the mark with that one it seems to me. The question is, Iran, Syria or Saudi next?[17/05/03]

• 2003: first human clone is born and verified as such. All governments that haven't already done so outlaw human cloning. However it continues in China supposedly illegally but in actuality with Chinese Government backing.[12/05/02]

  Despite several claims, no verification: I say China is still working on it.[16/03/04]

• 2004: world economy is seen to be in decline by academic economists. The more astute ones note that the black economy is booming. The poor and the old suffer disproportionally - no news there then.[12/05/02]

  All economists can manage at present is furious hand-waving. I had too much faith in economists, who are even less reliable as guides to the economy than weather forecasters are to weather, which is to say not much at all.[11/01/05]

• 2005: phones and PDAs are pretty much indistinguishable. Everyone is on the 'net.[12/05/02]

  OK, so that one was a shoe-in. And I should have said "on the 'net, mostly by wireless."[14/09/05]

• 2005: major shortfalls apparent in the taxation revenues of governments in the developed world, especially US and Europe. The black economy expands - an increasingly mobile world population relies on money and services outside the reach of government action.[12/05/02]

  Of course, it's proving more complicated than that: "dollar hegemony" has created a bizarre situation where value-less paper (as opposed to objects and systems of concrete benefit to people) controls peoples' destiny. This house of cards clearly is going to collapse but as to when is another matter.[15/09/05]

  Governments have jumped on the global warming train as a handy of way of empowering a whole raft of new taxes and regulations, which in its Machiavellian way is genious - however the weather changes it can be blamed on global warming and more government regulation demanded as a result.[11/06/07]

• 2005: the CIA finally admits that the "Deep Black" Mach 5/6 capable reconnaissance aircraft Aurora has been operating since the mid-1980s.[05/06/02]

  They've still not fessed up but it's out there. Maybe the Blackstar mothership/orbiter system is doing the job.[11/03/06]

• 2007: governments in the developed world abandon state-backed pensions schemes. Conventional (government-sanctioned) financial institutions are in major decline in the face of free-market systems developed using modern communications technology. Gold and precious metal backed Hawala type transactions mediated by electronic (encrypted) bearer certificates are widely used. This all happens in spite of attempts at government regulation. TWAT intensifies as a direct consequence of governments trying to keep a grip on their ability to levy taxes.[12/05/02]

  This one isn't so clear-cut. Pensions in the UK have moved into property, with a continuing property price boom of positively absurd proportions. The boom isn't entirely artificial however because house-building lags considerably behind demand thanks to government regulation.
  TWAT is being ramped up but that was hardly difficult predict. Given the situations in Iraq and Afghanistan it's safe to assume the black economy is booming on the back of illicit drugs and stolen oil.[10/06/07]

• 2007: NASA is pretty much defunct as a vital force in the exploration of space. Privately-funded space projects are beginning to become notable for successes. There are still plenty of rich people around willing pay for exotic experiences.[12/05/02]

  This one is true but public interest in space aviation is still somewhat lukewarm and nobody much has really noticed. This will get more interesting in the next few years (up to 2020) I think: orbital hops in commercial spacecraft will make long-distance travel much more time-efficient for those as can afford it. The security check-in will take longer than a trans-pacific hop.
  Likely a whole lot of black budget shenanigans are keeping NASA afloat, secret military programmes assuredly abound.[10/06/07]

• 2010 and counting: "experts" are still arguing over whether human-induced global warming is really happening and what it will mean.[12/05/02]

  I had too much faith in scientific objectivity here. "Scientific consensus" has been declared, the facts be damned. The lights are going out all over Europe in more ways than one.[03/11/06]

  The question for me is, given I remain optimistic about the power and utility of the Scientific Method, when will the wheels come off the global warming train and the public at large realise they've been had?[11/06/07]

• By 2010: governments all over the developed world are becoming more authoritarian as tax revenues fade away. Increasingly disaffected populations are kept in check by the deployment of exotic (so-called) "non-lethal" weapons systems, advanced "Psychological Warfare" techniques (including highly-sophisticated outgrowths of the MKULTRA mind-control projects as a complement to conventional propaganda) and pervasive surveillance technology, all justified (of course) by TWAT. The doctrine of "individual resistance" becomes more important, as does use of telecomms to organise mass demonstrations/civil disobedience at extremely short notice.[12/05/02]
• By 2010: the once enthusiastic proponents of genetic engineering are increasingly being forced to admit their researches are raising more questions than they're answering. The increasing number of human clone babies are doing fine. Cloning of pets and farm animals is widespread. There are considerable popular opinion pressures to legalize human cloning.[12/05/02]
• By 2010: world human population is agreed to be markedly in decline due to reduced birthrates in every country. No really significant medical advances have occurred in spite of sundry grandiose claims to the contrary. Life expectancy continues to creep closer to the human maximum of 120 years due to improved primary health care and nutrition.[12/05/02]
• By 2010: the claims of proponents of nanotechnology are becoming increasingly grandiose, whilst at the same time there being little sign of actual real-world implementations. However, the size of what is termed nanotech is mysteriously increasing due to the practical difficulties inherent in moving single atoms for real-world applications becoming more and more apparent. Miniaturization of electronic components continues apace but nanotechnology is only relevant if defined in very loose terms.[12/05/02]
• 2010: NASA partially gets its act together and makes serious attempts to put effort into developing and deploying nuclear rocket technology. However, NASA is so tied into the Defence Industry it is unable to make real progress due to widespread corruption and fraud.[12/05/02]
• 2015: Human cloning is legal and widespread in most of the Western world. Tinkering with genes termed "genetic surgery" is widespread with mixed results - it develops as medicine always has by empirical observation and inspired guesswork. Both the Japanese and the Chinese governments are (independently) putting considerable resources into artificial wombs that will be capable of bringing a fertilized human egg to full term as a healthy baby.[12/05/02]
• 2015: Serious attempts are being made by China to establish bases on the Moon. America is still relying on the aging Space Shuttle fleet as the next-generation replacements developed largely by military contractors rather than private sector space companies go massively over-budget and behind schedule. The American Military and Government are becoming increasingly concerned about the military implications of China's developing space prowess.[12/05/02]

Not as soon as you think, if ever.

• Spaceships that can travel at a significant fraction of the speed of light. At least a century away, probably more like two or three. A considerable technological infrastructure will have to exist off-world before this can even be attempted. NASA is bankrupt in so many ways, it's the Chinese or (less likely) the Russians that will make this happen if anyone since it's likely to require coercion to make people pay for it. If NASA really gets its act together with nuclear rocket technology this could be saved but I don't see it in my lifetime. (Private companies simply won't be allowed to play with nuclear rocket technology.)[12/05/02]
• Artificial intelligence arrives in that machines become self-aware, even to the level of a pigeon or a rat. Will certainly not happen in the next hundred years and probably not for hundreds after that. I really am sorry to rain on your parade with this one guys, but you're not going to get there until you see past computers or computer systems as a model for the way a brain works. A single neuron in the human brain is simultaneously a modeling engine vastly more powerful than all the supercomputers ever put together and a redundant component of powerful interlinked systems immensely more complicated than any machine system ever conceived. And that ain't the half of it.[12/05/02]
• Nanotech living up to any of the hype. If nanotech really worked (by which I mean machines the size of a small molecule assembling artifacts to a pattern reliably atom-by-atom) biology would have been doing it millennia ago.[12/05/02]

Possible anytime but maybe never.

These are the sort of things that would make me say, "WOAH! all bets are off now!" I'd definitely have to rewrite future history if this stuff happened. (Hmm... if I could rewrite future history it would be like David Lynch's "Dune" only with more psychotropic drugs and mass cloning of gorgeous-blue-eyed-blonde-babes.)

• Faster than light travel and/or time travel. Not in my lifetime and probably never.¹ "Ya cannae change the laws of physics Captn!" ... you will have to figure out some new ones first.[12/05/02] But...
• Intelligent aliens are on Earth and in the solar system and this is widely acknowledged. However...
  • In fact they've actually been here before... in fact they're probably here right now.
  • They do not have large breasts, bumpy foreheads and they don't wear catsuits. In fact, they aren't even remotely humanoid in appearance.
  • We have so little in common there's really nothing much to say: we can't figure out their language, we can't figure out what they're trying to say in ours, we can't figure out their technology, we don't know if they can travel in time and/or faster than light or something else we haven't thought of yet (or may never be able to figure out) and we have no idea what they're actually doing here.
  ...interest in space exploration becomes the number one priority. A whole industry speculating what this might possibly mean springs up. This really could happen any time but, that said, I'm not holding my breath.[12/05/02]
• "Free Energy Devices" go on sale. By which I mean devices not requiring conventional energy input and using some physical principle not yet understood. An example would be if Pons and Fleichman's "cold fusion" had worked out. Again, I'm not holding my breath on this one but you never know. There certainly aren't any around at the time of writing.[14/05/02]
• "Reactionless Drive" is discovered/made. Like "Free Energy Devices" this one is another wildcard. It seems to me that current physics has only vaguely plausible explanations for the mechanism responsible for the manifestation of inertial mass so I wouldn't be surprised but as usual not holding my breath.[14/05/02]

¹ Actually, time travel into the future is certainly on the cards but, IMHO, time travel into the past simply can't happen since the Universe doesn't work that way - time (outside of Quantum Electrodynamics) doesn't have a direction, it's a measure of the relative change in state as perceived by a (human) observer.

Will never happen.

• Peace is declared in the world. TWAT will carry on for as long as any government can maintain a standing army and/or police force of some sort. Don't forget, war is peace.[12/05/02]

Comments to Johnny at:

John Pate <johnny@dvc.org.uk>