MeRoyMinoy
40244
435
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Sauce: https://web.archive.org/web/20221206030950/https://www.wired.com/1997/07/longboom/
It's an article from 1997 that talks about how the world could look by 2020, and how the prosperity of the 90s could continue to improve the world for everyone.
Then it goes on to talk about 10 things that could spoil this future, and I'll be damned if they almost all happened. Maybe not to this extreme and maybe not nr. 10 but hey, who knows what can still get done
GiantFlyingLabia
We’re either at or on the way to all of those things. Yay
YeroctheBarbarian
Yes I’ve played Fallout games before.
TierfreierNichtraucherhaushalt
makesense
Um....#10 is literally what MAGA is doing.
kiwitreelady
This means we're winning, right?
MikeRInternetTraveler
Yeah, we are solidly in the “Events leading to…” paragraph in the history book
dirtyFrenchman
I’m in this picture and I don’t like it.
taurondir
I don't think I like living in an era where we are predicting future events like a bunch of movie directors trying to come up with themes for a new apocalyptic film.
knubberrub
Sorry everyone - 3. 27 years ago Russia was already a kleptocracy run by the mafia. The black market ran at least the final 20 years of the Soviet Union. and 9. That wasn't COVID, obviously. hahahahano.
relsky
10 for 10! Woohoo!
doodlydoofus
My retirement plan is to make sure to position myself in a questionable pose when the nukes go off so when people emerge from their fallout shelters and explore the wasteland they'll find an AK47 and a syringe of morphine in my fridge with my skeleton still positioned on the toilet wearing rollerblades and sunglasses where the rims are shaped like stars.
KittyKlimt6
As a feminist: wow. Someone else understood patriarchy already in the 90es. Who would've thought.
OdiousFunk
yeah, I am beginning to think we are living in number 10 right now
OliverOtter
It's a mix of right and wrong predictions. In same-year dollars, energy prices are still in a relative low trend compared to historical norms. They were just EXCEPTIONALLY low historically for a while due to the advantages of fracking. We stopped that because prices got too low (one of its advantages is it can start and stop; a drilled well cannot) and excuses about environmental concerns (which are real; they're just not the real reason fracking stopped), then we didn't restart it.
RocketKokket
Welp......
TheNoirAntagonist
If you read cyberpunk media they also hit pretty near the mark most of the time too. we just don't have all the cyberware yet. The thing about learning from history and trends is you can see when they are going to repeat or occur. People who seek power and personal wealth for the sake of control throughout history have always made the world worse. And the cogs of the machine of shit keep turning only getting better when we stand together against it.
PurpleKryptonite
For the record, the "Long Boom" was invented by futurist and Wired publisher Kevin Kelly, who came up with it as a way of saying "We don't need to worry about poor people because in the future there just won't be any."
He also bet actual money that by 2025, Bigfoot would be a scientifically accepted fact. https://longbets.org/120/
AndrewTheLionheart
I dunno, I think the scale is almost as important as the particular disruption itself.
IhopeyougetstageIIIcoloncancer
The rest of the article is equally unpleasant. The section on "the millenial generation" discusses a world where access to healthcare expands life expectancy, and online voting facilitates direct democracy. This feels like reading those 1950's sci-fi pieces about moon colonies.
cousteau
I'm so happy that number 4 was mostly avoided. Yay!
moepwizzy
What are you all on about? Most of them are very wrong:
1. Tensions? Sure, had 'em for ages. Cold war? Hell no. Hot? Def no.
2. We've become hella productive. Most of that goes to the rich, but still.
3. I'll give you that one. Still, not Quasicommunist at all.
4. Eh, Europe is fine. Sure, there are tensions and a few bad apples, but it's not like it's breaking apart.
moepwizzy
5. Oh come on, that was already predicted back then.
6. Terrorism and Crime is not particularly high in the western world.
7. Eh? Rise in cancer due to pollution? I don't think that's a thing. Is it? maybe some specific cancers.
8. The oil price ain't more or less stable then before. The Saudis are fine. Energy prices are going up (not sure if everywhere). But we're also getting more and more alternatives.
9. I'll give you that as well.
moepwizzy
10. Yeah, admittedly, we got a few issues with the fascist. The issue: there are fascists... Not sure if that will stop progress. We'll see.
lucivjov
Was this written by an American lol?
MeRoyMinoy
Probably but these spoilers have always been apparent in Europe too. Russia and Brexit are primarily our issues, the looming threat of terrorism is something that you generally feel in European cities. Not downplaying the issues the US or other countries have, but it's a sign of global struggle
IdiotSavantTinker
Europeans: "Haha, stupid Americans, they're such losers" Also Europeans: "Plzzz U.S.A. can we haz weapons? Ruzzia is being mean again."
cousteau
Easy for you to say when you're not constantly kicking wasp nests that are next to YOUR country
IdiotSavantTinker
Have we been kicking russia?
Geistbar
Going through the list...
Yes: 1, 3, 4, 5, 8, 10
Somewhat: 6 (yes terrorism, but no on crime), 9 (Covid killed far fewer than 200m people, somewhere in the 15-40m range).
I don't know: 7 — I don't believe cancer has overwhelmed the health system, has it? It's gone up but the health system was overwhelmed by covid and poor funding, not cancer rates.
No: 2. Productivity continues to go up, just the benefit isn't going to workers.
saganworshipper
i DISAGREE ON 4 AND 8.
CloudsandRainandSunandWind
Regarding 6, I'm not even sure on the increase in terrorism. Feels like more now, but we also forget how much terrorism happened in older decades and other places.
makobernal
1. China - US Cold War? Really? With your 3rd trading partner after Canada and Mexico?
4. Far from grinding to a halt! Not the reality here in the ground. Yes we had Brexit (good riddance if you ask me) but the union is larger, more effective, more interconneted than ever. I've worked and studied on 5 different countries, had customers all over the continent, bough property with minimal fuss. We've had millions of people moving for work, sometimes settling, sometimes going back.
Geistbar
If you don't think the US and China are in the modern equivalent of a Cold War, you aren't paying attention to geopolitics.
StSob
It might be controversial, but i think 3 is a "somewhat" or even a "no". At this point its pretty clear that Russian military potential is way lower than it was in USSR times and there isnt a lot of space for improvement. This means Russia cant be a real military threat to Europe in the same way as USSR. You can see it in the european responce to the war: most governments see it as a serious problem, but not an existential one.
cousteau
I think the EU integration has been mostly working
Geistbar
I gave the EU one a yes because there's been a lot of struggles with EU integration over the past decade or so. The southern med state's debt crisis, Brexit, Hungary and Poland shielding each other while backsliding on democracy, the Euro becoming more and more German-centric, freakouts over migrants...
The EU is still ultimately doing well. But the full-steam ahead integration of the past has died.
makobernal
Poland (and Polish people abroad) have been doing pretty well. Plenty of old Eastern Europe countries have surpassed Spain and Italy in terms of GDP. The debt crisis was ultimately fixed. France and the Netherlands continue to increase their relative growth and influence on the Eurozone.
Brexit and Hungary have been challenges but I think the EU has been strengthened. And there are still challenges but the EU integration dream has not failed, it has matured.
unclesporky
I see multiple sites online that say covid deaths globally are at about 7 million. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1093256/novel-coronavirus-2019ncov-deaths-worldwide-by-country/
For 5, aren't a lot of price spikes still attributable to covid's disruption to supply chains? While global warming is a concern, its effects haven't hit critical mass in most regions yet, right?
Not sure about 8 and 10 either, on the scale that they spell "disaster." Gas prices are quite stable at the moment.
Geistbar
1/2 Official covid deaths are in the 7-8m range. Official figures don't capture everything. Think of some states in the US, eg FL, that avoided recording deaths as covid-related for political reasons. Then look at entire countries doing that, like Russia and China and India. Or countries that lack the ability to do so due to being weaker states, like a lot of Africa and the Middle East.
For food prices, there's been volatility before the 2020s. Covid/Ukraine made it worse but didn't start it.
Geistbar
2/2 For energy prices, there's been huge volatility in the time frame this piece was meant to cover. The Iraq War caused prices to go way up. So did Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Renewables aren't being deployed fast enough globally for this.
On 10, just look at the backsliding on vaccines, democracy, women's rights, etc. across much of the west, especially the US. France, Germany, Italy, Austria are seeing a resurgence of fascist or fascist-adjacent political parties. This one is easy.
Madchant
Anti-intellectualism is rampant in the USA, and it's taken over the republican party.
sadurdaynight
The hypocrisy of them is they want all the new technology and innovations, but they want the scientists, geeks, nerds, etc to be 2nd class citizens controlled by the morons. They're the epitome of a high school class where the jocks and "cool kids" are dumb as rocks, but bully the smart kids into doing all the work. That's what they want. What they fail to realize is that history is full of examples where smart people kick dumb people to the curb quickly.
peedrinkingcrapface
the problem with the Anti-Intellectualism argument is that it assumes the existence of Pro-Intellectualism.
CincoProductsINC
You mean education?
Geistbar
Taken over the republican party? It *is* the republican party. If anything it's the other way around: republicans took over the anti-intellectualism movement, upon which it quickly dominated the party.
nikkococo1998
There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.
Pokegeologist
Asimov?
BronyDanza
There is an anti-intellectual, faux-populist line from Joe McCarthy to Roy Cohn to Trump and it runs exactly through the Republican Party. The only real difference now are right-wing corporate news and social media platforms that allow the unchecked spread of conspiracy theories and disinformation.
None of this is anything new unfortunately.
kaarbaakimgr
What is needed THIS YEAR is a movement similar to the 1850s US where parties transformed due to extreme positions within existing parties. If there were a movement right now within the Republican Party willing to fully and officially split from Trump, they could (at the cost of the 2024 election) reform and come out stronger for 2028. Dems never really had much backbone. They consistently just whittle away at each other within tge party and lose elections out of apathy. They won’t change.
autodidacticcortex
Placing sole blame on the republicans, as vile as they are, does us all a disservice. We are where we are today due to the combined policy of our total government policy of the past few decades.
LuLuPennyAndOdium44
The republicans of today are NOT the Bush era replublicans of yesterday
kaarbaakimgr
You skipped the Tea Party movement
KuldFyt
Yeah, the "we saw this coming" aspect of the apocalypse is the most frustrating part of it all.
Shaodyn
We knew it was coming, but the ones in power refused to do anything.
ALLCAPSROCK
false, trudeau gave us Canadians the carbon tax to pay for his vanity projects... nope, crap that would be assuming trudeau is in any position of actual power other outside of Ottawa!
hardytardigrade
Yeah. "Well, how about no, you're wrong, and that's ridiculous" is such an easy cop-out especially for the systemically ignorant
Donoiw
What are you talking about. We've only hit 8 of 10, I'm sure we're going to be fine.
Spoonland
I was in Genova in 2001 protesting against G8 exactly for such things. We were massacred, slaughtered in the name of profit. and here we are
StSob
IMO its just some version of confirmation bias. Thousands of various predictions were made during the last 30 years alone, so its easy to find one thats close to the current events.
adiving
That's the wrong angle though. It's not about the specific date of the prediction. If you see something about to collapse it really doesn't matter much whether that's in 10 or 100 years. It's about seeing it go worse during that time. Knowing something bad is gonna happen and just standing there gaping completely unable to do anything about it.
hardytardigrade
Which sets of multiple predictions made in mainstream media are you using as counterexamples? Climate change, exacerbation of existing international issues, failures of developing technology, and the strong possibility of global pandemic are not random concerns this person picked out of a hat. They have been known dangers for decades.
KuldFyt
Ok, I can't speak to how many genuine opinions there were on the geopolitical ones, but the predictions on climate change crystalized in the '70s that it was happening, was human-induced, and would be catastrophic. Working climate scientists have had >90% consensus on these points ever since. Global pandemics have been a driving concern for decades, and this was written in the wake of the AIDS pandemic. The overwhelming consensus among public health officials since then has always been that 1/
KuldFyt
/2 wild reservoirs of disease represent a difficult to predict threat that demands constant vigilance. And corporate disregard for environmental regulation is so ingrained into our social consciousness that it was literally a Saturday morning cartoon. These are not wild, offbeat predictions cherry-picked from among failures. This list is so routine for the time that it's a little surprising anyone bothered writing it down.
StSob
I mean, even in this list we can say that points 2, 7, 8 and 10 didnt happen at all. 4 and 6 are common fears but for now those 2 arent happening either. The remaining four points are fairly accurate, although id say that 3 is the least accurate of those. So its easy to miss half of the predictions even with consensus stuff. Im not trying to say that predicting future is pointless, but the most important part of it is why and how those things could happen, and that value is lost in such lists.
KuldFyt
2- The .com bubble burst was three years after this. 4- Brexit happened. 6- The war on terror gutted US soft power, on everything from our ability to shame people over war crimes to our ability to put vaccination programs into critical public health points. 7- It's true, cancer rates have held fairly steady and we've managed to push back survivability in most cases by years. Good for us. 8- energy costs drive costcuts that drive repeated wildfires in California to the point that they purposely1/
KuldFyt
cut power regularly because they can't handle the liability. In Texas the drive to cut costs gave them a grid that shuts down if it gets too cold or too hot. 10- Are you fucking serious. The primal need conservatives have to force women to bear their rapists' children gave us the Trump presidency. Unambiguously, that's the fucking deal the religious right made- stack the court and we'll give you a pass on fucking everything. We can talk all you like about his base being rabid, but a third of 2/
insaaanity
We already knew that an epidemic would come, about climate change, about Russia and the EU, the writing was on the wall for a lot of these. We got pretty lucky, all things considered. At least so far. Maybe we should stop rolling the dice constantly...
KuldFyt
insaaanity
That's specifically a Goblin from Pathfinder, isn't it?