Douglas Coupland’s Guide to the Next 10 Years

This is funny and frightening read.

A radical pessimists guide to the next 10 years – The Globe and Mail

Douglas Coupland is the man who brought us Generation X, Life after God, Microserfs, and many other equally pessimistic and eerily accurate, erm, novels.

Noteworthy to me:

14) Something smarter than us is going to emerge

Thank you, algorithms and cloud computing.

20) North America can easily fragment quickly as did the Eastern Bloc in 1989

Quebec will decide to quietly and quite pleasantly leave Canada. California contemplates splitting into two states, fiscal and non-fiscal. Cuba becomes a Club Med with weapons. The Hate States will form a coalition.

34) You’re going to miss the 1990s more than you ever thought

37) People will stop caring how they appear to others

The number of tribal categories one can belong to will become infinite. To use a high-school analogy, 40 years ago you had jocks and nerds. Nowadays, there are Goths, emos, punks, metal-heads, geeks and so forth.

38)Knowing everything will become dull

It all started out so graciously: At a dinner for six, a question arises about, say, that Japanese movie you saw in 1997 (Tampopo), or whether or not Joey Bishop is still alive (no). And before long, you know the answer to everything.

45) We will accept the obvious truth that we brought this upon ourselves

Good stuff.