Five More Predictions

Hi, here's 5 new ones:

1. Revenge Of The 90s: Commonly, nostalgia for an earlier era has been operating on the "twenty-year" model: in the 70s there was 50s nostalgia, in the 80s there was 60s retro, in the 90s there was (shudder) 70s-hip. But as time seems to be speeding up (heading for 2012 and beyond), so has our nostalgia. The next several years will seem like a replay of the mid-to-late 90s--specifically, (for the US at any rate) the Clinton Years (in every sense of the word). There is going to be an influx of giddy optimism across the land, bordering on being high on Ecstasy. The US has been so completely pressurized and traumatised over the last 4 years that it is just going to go in the opposite direction. Think Fleetwood Mac's "Don't Stop Thinking About Tomorrow". This feeling of optimism will coincide nicely with the unveiling of the new WTC. There will also be overlapping it all an early-60s flashback--think "Camelot", the new frontier. Innovations in space exploration as well. And society will be so high on this "new tomorrow" that they'll stop being so darn political and worried and they'll just sit back and enjoy their new Ipod-type device that can store and playback thousands of movies and every episode of "Lost In Space".

2. Revenge of the Internet Boom: Dovetailing quite nicely with this retro-90's feeling will be a new Web Boom. We'll have new speculators, overnight millionaires, etc. Best of all: we're gonna need people to type in, organize, & advertize all that info that used to be in books and are now going to be ibooks or simply on the Net for a fee. Think about it: books, movies, newspapers, magazines, music: all on your hard drive or ipod or on the Net. The death of Paper is coming far sooner than we think. And DVDs and CDs have about 4 years tops before they start to look like beta and laserdiscs to us--that's not a prediction, the companies already know this and are preparing. If you work at a video-rental store (like half my friends do), brush-up your data-entry skills...or consider pursuing your Dream Job (you'll probably have a better chance in the next several years to do this successfully than you ever had or will have).

3. A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Election: Question...if there really is a bigger organization pulling the strings from their shadowy perches, on which American presidential candidate's side do you think they're on?

4. Episode Seven: Yep, they're going to do another Star Wars trilogy. (stop laughing) There will be a heavy focus on training whole fleets of young jedis, very mystical stuff. A very strong sense of preparing the next generation for the times to come. And also a very strong sense of how old I am if Luke is old enough to be Obi-Wan.

5. Just Say No: There's going to be big drug scandals of another kind altogether...when certain well-known, heavily-prescribed drugs (which have never gone through long-term human trials) are targeted for their cumulative, long-term side-effects. These drugs will have almost like a "warranty-expiration date" sort of thing where people who have been on them for a certain amount of time--6, ten years--all get really really sick at the same time.

And th-th-that's all, folks!