To prove you don't have to be a psychic to make wildly inaccurate predictions for the year ahead, I am laying down ten of them. These are based on nothing in particular, besides a gut feeling which could simply be the result of acid from drinking too much coffee this morning. These predictions are intended as entertainment only -- please, no wagering.
1. Predictions will be a week late. I foresee that posting my predictions for 2009 will be, perhaps, a week past the New Year.
2. Palin the Pug. Barack Obama promised his daughters they would have a dog in the White House. I foresee it will be a pug and the family will name it in honor of the most compelling reason for his being elected.
3. Negative numbers. The Federal Reserve will drop interest rates to negative 1/2% and will begin sending Americans small bundles of money in an attempt to convince us that the economy is healthy.
4. Big 1 U.S. Automaker. GM, Pontiac and Ford, in an effort to consolidate their finances, and out of sheer desperation, will combine forces. While this will keep them from going belly up in the short term, the bad news is that they will reduce inventory and only offer one model of car. The good news? The new car, to be dubbed Desperado, will get 8 miles per gallon.
5. The iKey. Apple Computer will diversify as they surge to widen their customer base. 2009 will bring the new iKey to market. Containing a microprocessor and made of a kind of "memory metal", the iKey can emulate any of the keys on your key chain and store their configurations in its onboard memory. In the spirit of J.R.R. Tolkein, it will be "one key to rule them all."
6. The End of the World. At least three doomsayers and Al Gore will call for the world to end by the end of the year.
7. Idiots in power. Countries around the world, big and small, will continued to be ruled -- to a large degree -- by a collection of morons, misfits and mindless dolts. This will result in petty conflicts, outrageous declarations and out-and-out warfare. Not funny, but true.
8. Web 4.0. With Web 2.0 barely in place, let alone understood, the internet will leapfrog 3.0 and go right to 4.0. Beyond your computer, we will be able to get the internet fed directly into the cerebral cortex. Drawbacks: You have to be in a WiFi area to get connected. And if anyone defaults on the $29.99 a month fee their brain will execute an auto shutdown.
9. Normal clothes. Realizing the recession could sound the death knell for their industry, fashion designers will, for the first time in recent memory, march out line after line of clothes that look normal on normal-sized people. Hemlines will neither raise nor lower. Necklines will remain unchanged. And fashion models will, universally, gain an average of 20 pounds in an effort to appear "normal".
10. Blipverts come to life. On the ond TV series "Max Headroom", which was set in a dysfunctional future, TV commericals had been reduced to 3 second "blipverts" because of massive short attention spans in the viewing audiences. Now, having been outwitted by Tivo and other digital recorders which allow TV watchers to take command of the screen, advertisers will stumble on the fact that human reactions are too slow to get to the remote in just 3 seconds -- the perfect time to slip in an annoying blipvert.
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