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A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century Buzz up!
Chuck Klosterman issueshis predictions for the coming century. Featuring robot wars, nearannihilation, and President Tom Brady.
By Chuck Klosterman
[more from this author]
NOV. 4, 2008:John McCain takes the U.S. presidency with 277 electoral votes, winningOhio and Florida by less than 1 percent of the vote. American policy onIraq does not change.
JULY 14, 2009: While the priceof gas hits five dollars per gallon in most American cities, the valueof the dollar becomes exactly half the value of the euro. World travelbecomes a luxury available only to the rich; on the upside, NorthwestAirlines goes bankrupt.
OCT. 4, 2010:Canada legalizes the cloning of livestock for human consumption.
FEB. 1, 2011: North Korea initiates an open, cooperative relationship with Russia.
NOV. 6, 2012: Obamadefeats the incumbent McCain in a landslide. However, the most curiousaspect of the election is the candidacy of Digger True, a grassroots"blogucrat" who runs as an independent, solely using the Internet. Truedoes not express any concrete views and does not participate indebates. Instead, he produces online supercuts of patriotic aphorisms,set to the music of Collective Soul. To the surprise of many in themainstream media, True gets 3 percent of the popular vote. Blogucratdisciples begin petition drives advocating the elimination of copyrightlaws and the option of voting over the Web.
MAY 18, 2013: To the chagrin of his longtime supporters, President Obama concedes that U.S. troops can't be withdrawn from Iraq.
DEC. 31, 2014: Billed as "the floating Dubai," the inaugural space hotel opens itsdoors. Financed by Google, the cost is $2 million per room, perevening. Kanye West performs in the ballroom on opening night.
JUNE 15, 2015: The Paris Libertines defeat the London Plesiosaurs in the first NBA championship series featuring no American franchises.
SEPT. 12, 2016: DiggerTrue enters the presidential race less than two months before ElectionDay, this time campaigning with wordless, randomly generatedphotographs of voters (aggregated from social networks and displayed inrapid, continuous succession on his Web site). Despite never appearingin public, True gets 22 percent of the vote, but Obama wins reelection.
AUG. 20, 2017: Thefirst mainstream use of artificial intelligence becomes popular withconsumers -- the ability to have realistic phone sex without anotherperson.
JUNE 2, 2018: Summer movie audiences are entranced and titillated by Lars von Trier's Asking for It,an erotic thriller starring Christian Bale and Scarlett Johansson, seton the 110th floor of the World Trade Center on the morning of 9/11.
APRIL 15, 2019: Nolonger able to attract voters under the age of forty, the GOP absorbsthe blogucratic faction and makes Digger True the de facto Republicancandidate for 2020. True announces his reinvention on YouTube 3.1 byuploading a 4-D image of Abraham Lincoln copulating with a MacBook,synchronized to a live version of "Smack My Bitch Up" from the recentProdigy reunion tour. Congress makes online voting legal in all fiftystates.
NOV. 3, 2020: True becomes the first president of America's postliterate era. The outcome is bemoaned by The New York Times and The Washington Post,the only U.S. newspapers still printed on paper. President True doesnot appear in public for his entire tenure, communicating all publicpolicy via screen grabs of Dakota Fanning, delivered through his Tumblraccount.
AUG. 14, 2021: The final performance by theRolling Stones in Wembley Stadium. Ticket prices start at $18,200,ultimately netting the band $1 billion.
DEC. 31, 2023: The U.S. relaxes after the hottest year in history, contributing to the death of more than eighty thousand citizens.
JUNE 14, 2024: Chinese researchers find a cure for AIDS.
AUG. 13, 2025: A surprising announcement comes from Johns Hopkins University: As it turns out, smoking cigarettes is kind of good for you.
SEPT. 25, 2026: Anew folk hero captures the worldwide imagination whentwenty-five-year-old British hand model Gretchen Tobias scales the eastface of Mount Everest, without oxygen, totally naked.
JUNE 15, 2027: A startling revelation comes in the form of Obama's postpresidential autobiography, Cutting Backdoor:He admits that the decision to keep troops in Iraq was forced upon himby the Bilderberg Group, a secret society of world leaders who controlthe global economy. The book explains how Bilderberg's leadershipconcluded that the U.S. would not be prepared for a post-oil societyfor at least forty years; the only solution was to establish anAmerican presence in the Middle East that provided unlimited access topetroleum, thereby staving off worldwide economic collapse. Threemonths after the book's release, Obama disappears in a mysteriousboating mishap.
NOV. 7, 2028: Tom Brady (R-Michigan) defeats Will Smith (D-California) in the race for the Oval Office.
MAY 24, 2029:Eighty-eight-year-old Bob Dylan celebrates his birthday with the onlinerelease of "Oh, By the Way," a fourteen-minute song explicitlyexplaining the details of his 1966 motorcycle crash, his briefconversion to Christianity during the seventies, and what it was liketo have sex with Joan Baez. When asked why he chose to release suchpersonal material at this point in his life, Dylan cryptically replies,"That seems like a question you should be asking Bob Dylan."
MAY 8, 2030: A deathbed confession by George W. Bush reveals that JFK was, in fact, assassinated by the CIA.
SEPT. 2, 2031: Amysterious multiracial seven-foot man who refers to himself only as "B"shows up at NASA in Houston. He claims to be from the year 2131 andpossesses blueprints for a time machine that will take a hundred yearsto build. After a closed-door twelve-minute meeting with PresidentBrady, construction begins immediately.
JUNE 15, 2032: Avirtual-reality amusement park in Berlin allows patrons to momentarilyexperience the sensation of death. Controversy explodes when studiesindicate that almost 10 percent of those who participate in thesimulation commit suicide within one year.
APRIL 5, 2033: In a moment reminiscent of Texas Western's 1966 victory over Kentucky,the all-black Kentucky Wildcats are upset in the NCAA basketballchampionship by the University of Portland, a school whose squad iscomposed entirely of Asians.
SEPT. 2, 2034: Anothermultiracial seven-foot man (this one calling himself "C") arrives atNASA and begs scientists to discontinue work on the time machine. Hecannot explain why. The decision falls to President Brady, whoultimately concludes that the very presence of "B" and "C" dictatesthat the machine must be completed.
FEB. 14, 2036: Faced with the notion of "potential mammalian annihilation within fiftyyears," all First World nations agree to make climate change the leadfocus of their scientific inquiry. Fearing this will slow downcompletion of the time machine, "B" anecdotally submits a process thatcould replenish the ozone layer. Soon after delivering thisinformation, "B" murders "C." "B" chooses not to defend himself duringhis trial, saying only, "I have no regrets, except for those of allmankind." He is sentenced to prison and spends the next ten yearswriting his memoir, a manuscript he eventually destroys.
APRIL 8, 2037: Citingflawed financial management and waning public interest, Major LeagueBaseball folds. The top 12 percent of U.S. players join clubs in theDominican Republic.
DEC. 25, 2038: Working off therudimentary plans explained by "B," scientists begin to molecularlystitch the ozone hole above the Arctic Circle.
JULY 11, 2039: Bill Clinton, ninety-two, dies on the same day Chinese Democracy II is released.
NOV. 2, 2040: Dana Dukakis (D-New Jersey) becomes the first open hermaphrodite to win a gubernatorial election.
JUNE 11, 2041: In a matter of weeks, the entire Internet is replaced by "news blow," agranular microbe that allows information to be snorted, injected, orsmoked. Data can now be synthesized into a water-soluble powder andabsorbed directly into the cranial bloodstream, providing users with aninstantaneous visual portrait of whatever information they areinterested in consuming. (Sadly, this tends to be slow-motion images ofminor celebrities going to the bathroom.) Now irrelevant, an ocean ofWeb pioneers lament the evolution. "What about the craft?" they ask noone in particular. "What about the inherent human pleasure of movingone's mouse across a hyperlink, not knowing what a simple click mightteach you? Whatever happened to ironic thirty-word capsule reviewsabout marginally popular TV shows? Have we lost this forever?" "Youjust don't get new media," respond the news-blowers. "You just don'tget it."
APRIL 3, 2042: Scientists declare that repairs tothe ozone layer are a complete success. Polar bears, now extinct in thewild, are reintroduced to their natural habitat.
JUNE 22, 2043: As predicted by Arthur C. Clarke in 3001: The Final Odyssey, theorbiting luxury hotel is connected to Earth by a massive spaceelevator. Hyperstrong cables anchored to the earth near the equator (asrequired by physics) stretch 100,000 kilometers into the sky, risinginto the hotel's lobby.
SEPT. 19, 2044: Erasto Norman, the first black pope and an avid skiing enthusiast, is killed in an avalanche.
DEC. 1, 2045: Areport from the American Medical Association expresses fear over theproliferation of news blow. "It appears," the report concludes, "thatprolonged consumption of news blow renders the user incapable ofrelating to any person not engaged with an identical strain of thesubstance." Society is no longer separated by geography, culture, orlanguage; humans now group themselves solely through the shared use ofspecific info drugs. A divide emerges between Americans on the WestCoast (who primarily smoke news blow synthesized in rural California)and people living in the East (who snort a more potent strain developedin Baltimore). Over time, people in New York and Los Angeles findthemselves unable to communicate about anything -- they now understandthe most basic building blocks of information in totally different ways.
JUNE 22, 2046: Atthe World Games in Helsinki, U.S. sprinter Zeb Lovelace runs the 100meters in an astounding 8.99 seconds. His record is later disqualifiedwhen testing proves that Lovelace had been injecting himself withself-duplicating DNA taken from the bone marrow of cheetahs.
JAN. 1, 2047:News blow continues to splinter society. Though technically still aunion, the U.S. splits into two autonomous halves that have norelationship with each other. The same thing happens in Europe (nowdivided into seven vague provinces), Russia (which fractures into fiveregions), and Africa (which becomes five superstates, plus Madagascar).Select diplomats attempt to bridge the gaps by consuming multiplestrains of news blow simultaneously, but these attempts lead todepression and catatonia.
NOV. 6, 2048: New Yorkindustrialist Roger Kracken wins the title of president and moves intothe White House; however, he is a relatively unknown figure west ofMissouri and wields no power whatsoever on the Pacific coast. The lefthalf of the U.S. is governed by newly named Prime Minister Jamie LynnSpears. Immigration effectively ends; service-industry jobs are nowmostly performed by humanoid robots whose machinery is covered withindividually cloned muscle fibers, synthetic skin, and animal hair.
MARCH 18, 2049: Sweden bans the consumption of animal flesh as food.
MAY 22, 2050:The darkest day in world history -- nuclear suitcase bombs aresimultaneously detonated in Jerusalem, LAX airport, Moscow, Paris,Tokyo, and (somewhat oddly) Bangor, Maine, killing 370,000 people.Unable to effectively communicate diplomacy and confused by theterrorism's utter randomness, the entire planet adopts a policy ofcultural isolationism and lukewarm war.
OCT. 2, 2051: Inthe new age of global remoteness, military strategy becomes murky.Conventional wisdom suggests Australia is the most important region, asit can only be invaded via Indonesia. Others point to South America,since it is vulnerable only to Central American freedom fighters orNorth African warlords. Everyone agrees that Europe is a waste of time.
2052 TO 2055: No recorded history.
NOV. 3, 2056: Thereconstituted United States of America (once again a complete republic)holds its first meaningful election in twelve years. News blow has beencriminalized as America enters the Reactionary Age, a period of intensemorality and anti-intellectual rhetoric. The two presidentialcandidates -- human Tyrone Berkowitz and Cyborgic Construct "Terry 2"-- run clean, issue-oriented campaigns. Terry 2 wins a tight race,punctuating his victory thusly: "Those who attain wisdom throughartificial intelligence are no different from the human brothers whooffered them authentic life during the war that cannot be spoken of. Weare all the better for this."
OCT. 12, 2057: Aided by aworld currency that's backed by the diamond standard, global economiesboom. The exploding new market is wind, now the primary source ofenergy in most of the industrialized world.
MAY 17, 2058: TheCoca-Cola, a four-piece cyborgic musical act from Manchester, recordand release twelve songs at the same time, a format that has not beenused in more than four decades. The so-called "album" is titled We Exist Only to Rock You and is constructed after digital analysis of the most pleasing sonic elements off the Beatles' Revolver, Led Zeppelin's Physical Graffiti, Michael Jackson's Thriller, R.E.M.'s Murmur, and Brenda Kahn's Epiphany in Brooklyn.Cultural historian J.L. Dolan calls the work "an absolutely incredibleachievement, except for all that shit about having an epiphany inBrooklyn. I didn't really follow that."
JULY 20, 2059: Exactlyninety years after Armstrong, astronauts from China land on the moon.They, however, do not leave. China immediately installs a community ofboth humans and robots on the lunar surface. A new space race begins.
JAN. 5, 2061: Chicagodoctors perform the first successful brain transplant. The patientsurvives for sixty-one days, mostly in a state of perpetual terror andbefuddlement.
AUG. 10, 2062: America lands on the moon.Two months later, Russia does the same. Germany and Japan arrive inDecember. Suddenly, five small biospheres populate the lunar surface.The purpose of this is unclear and widely debated.
OCT. 30, 2063: Ateam of Wisconsin researchers argue that Holstein cows cantelepathically communicate with one another, often discussing theirfeelings and their plans for the day. The theory is dismissed.
JUNE 6, 2064: U.S.consumers become obsessed with "expectation entertainment": Bystimulating obscure areas of the brain with low pulses of electricity,people can be given the sensation of how it feels just beforethe actual experience of something they enjoy (a concert, sex, adelicious meal, etc.). By focusing on the anticipation of an event (asopposed to creating the event itself), audiences are never disappointed.
DEC. 23, 2065: The moon population reaches one million. Its primary industries are mining and tourism.
FEB. 20, 2066: Super Bowl C: Dallas defeats Denver 31-17. The NFL, for whatever reason, is pretty much the same as it always was.
FEB. 27, 2067: AMelbourne Zoo gorilla named Maureen takes a standard IQ test and scoresa 92. The Peter Singer Society, an Australian animal-rights group,immediately pushes for legislation that would grant citizenship todomesticated creatures.
AUG. 1, 2068: Census figuresindicate A.I. cyborgs are now the largest minority in the UnitedStates, comprising 21 percent of the populace. Hispanics are next at 20percent, followed by multiracial humans (17 percent), Euro-Americans(13 percent), African-Americans (11 percent), Asian-Americans (8percent), and race-neutral clones (3 percent). The total U.S.population is 640 million.
AUG. 13, 2069: "B," themysterious seven-footer who arrived at NASA thirty-eight years before,dies at his home in Reno, Nevada. Diaries discovered in his basementindicate the entire story might have been a hoax. Work on the timemachine, however, continues as planned.
JUNE 5, 2070:Wolves in Canada begin hunting humans at an alarming rate. Sharkattacks increase 40 percent. Jungle animals begin successfullyinfiltrating urban areas; a panther kills at least nine people indowntown Dallas. "I don't know why the animals are getting smarter,"says zoologist Eli Sperle-Cho, "but it's definitely happening."
OCT. 19, 2071: Anarmy of panda bears attacks Beijing, killing twelve hundred people andwounding thousands more during a bloody four-day onslaught.
APRIL 5, 2072: Animals are banned from the moon. House cats now kill more people than heart disease.
MAY 29, 2073:In a consolidated effort, America, China, Great Britain, and Russiadeclare war against the animals. It is decided that all militarymaneuvers will be conducted by robots.
2074 TO 2078: Robot vs. Animal War.
MAY 4, 2079:The Robot vs. Animal War concludes with the Kenya Peace Accords. Theanimals get Africa, Asia, North and South America, and Australia.Europe and Greenland are conceded to humans and nonhuman mechanicallife. Antarctica is a free zone. The majority of remaining Earth peoplemigrate to the moon, where overpopulation becomes an immediate problem.
JULY 6, 2080: Themoon population hits eight billion. Most live in underground caves.Food is generated by the high-speed cloning of soy, rice, and headlesschicken carcasses. Water is the most valuable commodity and backs thelunar currency.
NOV. 5, 2081: To slow oxygenconsumption, moon inhabitants are ordered to remain relativelymotionless for twenty hours a day. To compensate, every person isallowed to cerebrally download the complete memories of a fictionallifetime once a week; the populace now spends most of its time feelingnostalgic for things they did not actually do.
OCT. 20, 2082:Due to its surplus of frozen moisture, a decision is made to colonizeMars. Robotic and humanoid leaders agree to turn what remains of themoon into a massive military station, poised to resume a sky waragainst the animals and retake Earth by the turn of the twenty-secondcentury.
SEPT. 15, 2083: The 150th anniversary issue ofEsquire is made available via memory file -- an instantaneous burst ofbinary information that's absorbed through the retina from a disposablecontact lens. It allows the consumer to "have read" every word fromevery issue of the publication's entire existence, and even experiencethe precise symptoms of Frank Sinatra's cold. The robots love it.
***** |
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发表于 8-10-2008 22:36:35
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