Another precog in the machine
“The Crystal Ball,” 1902. Painting (detail): John William Waterhouse
Even though most people have at best a shaky grip on the past, and may be entirely at sea in the present, this stops no one from confidently forecasting the future. And the New Year is the prime time for people to trot out their notions of what the year ahead might hold.
MarketWatch, for example, predicts 3% growth in the economy and accelerating growth in wages. If that sounds a little tame, Geek.com touts “10 bold predictions for 2015.” Over-the-skin electrodes will hint at neural control for the masses, they prophesy. Yikes.
The futurists of The Daily News went back to the 1989 movie “Back to the Future 2” to assess how well it did at predicting 2015. Flat screens, drones, video-conferencing–check. Hoverboards, self-lacing shoes and flying cars–sadly not.
My Virgo horoscope for 2015 from GaneshaSpeaks tells me “During the first quarter of the year, you shall be preoccupied with work in order to achieve your goals.” Sadly so.
Psychics.co.uk predicts “major volcanic eruptions in Japan and Hawaii” and “strange fluctuations in the Earth’s magnetic field,” as well as “many countries may see terrorist attacks from loan gunmen”–bankers presumably, who do not respond well to magnetic fluctuation.
Finally–perhaps very finally–Coast to Coast AM host George Noory predicts that a small asteroid will hit the planet. This would be in keeping with his hosting of an Auld Lang Syne singing contest among his callers, and his annual roundup of “The Year in UFOs and ETs.”
I confidently predict that we will all go through the same exercise again in 2016. Or we will unless Noory is proven right in a big way.
Tags: listeningpost
Noory may be right, depending on one’s definition of “small”. I’m guessing that very small asteroids strike the Earth every day…or at least burn up trying.
Flying cars, or at least hovercraft of some sort would be really cool if it allowed us to stop spending so much to maintain all that concrete and asphalt. Imagine if all our highways were just grass strips…..
If all roads were just grass strips and we were using flying cars, roads wouldn’t need to be plowed and no salt would be used to clear the roads.
The only problem I see with flying cars or hover craft is their ability to quickly stop.
Darn but another problem could be with trucks. I doubt they have as much chance of flying as do pigs.
And isn’t this the problem with so many great ideas? You look at them closely and they start falling apart.
Well, freight would all have to return to the rails in my book, where it should have been all along. The biggest problem I see with hovercraft is that they’d have to hover at a level higher than the deer… On the other hand, if that were possible, then the grass-highways could be maintained by rotational grazing, and a once a year mowing.
For those who relish the idea of individually operated flying conveyances consider the size and complexity of the air traffic control system in the US to handle approximately 100,000 take offs and landings per day (about 30,000 commercial, 30,000 general aviation, 25,000 air taxi and a combined 15,000 military, cargo and miscellaneous). Considering that there are about 200 million licensed drivers in the US let us assume that about half of them make at least one round trip per day that would be 2000 times (I assume one takes off from a home/hotel/motel/? lands at one’s destination and returns which is likely a very low estimate since many folks make multiple trips per day) as many take offs and landings per day as there are now of aircraft. Now consider the size and complexity of the highly constrained two dimensional system of roads we have and imagine the vastly more complex three dimensional system required to allow 100 million, or more, individuals to flit about hither, thither and yon with purpose or whim without crashing into each other.