Douglas Coupland's guide to next 10 Years

[Azrael]

Douglas Coupland is the Canadian novelist who popularized such terms as "Generation X" and "McJob".

Some bits:

1) It's going to get worse

No silver linings and no lemonade. The elevator only goes down. The bright note is that the elevator will, at some point, stop.

2) The future isn't going to feel futuristic

It's simply going to feel weird and out-of-control-ish, the way it does now, because too many things are changing too quickly. The reason the future feels odd is because of its unpredictability. If the future didn't feel weirdly unexpected, then something would be wrong.

9) The suburbs are doomed, especially those E.T. , California-style suburbs

This is a no-brainer, but the former homes will make amazing hangouts for gangs, weirdoes and people performing illegal activities. The pretend gates at the entranceways to gated communities will become real, and the charred stubs of previous white-collar homes will serve only to make the still-standing structures creepier and more exotic.

12) Expect less

Not zero, just less.

13) Enjoy lettuce while you still can

And anything else that arrives in your life from a truck, for that matter. For vegetables, get used to whatever it is they served in railway hotels in the 1890s. Jams. Preserves. Pickled everything.

And finally, one of the few that I think he gets wrong:

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

[Demon of Undoing]

Sounds about right.

Like now, only shittier.

[Colonel Sun]

Doom and gloom certainly sells.

[Sparky]

I predict that tomorrow's lettuce will be so crisp and sharp that a single leaf could be used to slice the piles right off a dozen pickle-munching bunker dweller's behinds faster than any of them can recite the instructions embossed on their chemical toilets.

[Tinker]

Based on the paraphrasing. He's an unimaginative idiot. He's merely parroting the party line. No fresh veggies? What an idiot.

[Tinker]

Declinists usually imagine the future will look like the past because they are stuck in it in the present. The future may be ruled by Murphy but it ain't gonna be an encore. It'll be new and unimagined shit.

McGangbangers in gated communities? Sure but that's already the case. Some of the people in those ghettoes will be selling lettuce from their gardens.

When I met Neal Stephenson he said that Snow Crash was nothing like how things were turning out. He was wrong about that. Snow Crash is what the future will look like.

2035 = Snow Crash
2135 = Diamond Age

[Azrael]

[Azrael]

[Tinker]

[thecontributer]

[Colonel Sun]

Isn't it science fiction?

[Tinker]

[Torchwood]

Not worth the paper it is written on, like all long term forecasts. Pessimists ignore the fact that society digs itself out of holes. Optimists ignore that they dig new and unexpected ones.

A forecast done in 1980 would have expected an inflation -ridden world, with expensive energy, 10 years later, with the USSR and the Iron Curtain still in place.

As for this past decade, no-one forecast 9/11, even a year before it happened.

On the contrarian basis I expect that by 2020 we will all be living prosperously, and still in those suburbs. Meanwhile some completely unexpected other sh*t will happen.

[Tinker]

What I thought was interesting was that a lot of the things he was pessimistic about are good things IMV. Like people becoming more matter of fact about their bodies.

In America at least, there IS a move away from the suburbs. A lot more exurban and urban living these days.