When I Predicted 2010

Will Truman

Will Truman is the Editor-in-Chief of Ordinary Times. He is also on Twitter.

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13 Responses

  1. Will H. says:

    That’s really odd about the terrorist attack.
    And President Bush.

    I was writing horror fiction around that time.
    Pales in comparison to this.Report

  2. Tod Kelly says:

    Why is this in OTC?Report

  3. Burt Likko says:

    Well, I’m very glad about the things you got wrong, both personally and with respect to the overall condition of heavy crime. Your vision of America in 2010 might have looked a bit like, say, South Africa?

    On the personal level, it’s very difficult for a 15-year-old to understand young-adult social interactions, to really get it that people who want to find mates, do (eventually) find mates. All you really know at that age is the frustration of wanting a mate and not having one, and you’re really too young to know what it is that you want in a mate other than existence. Then, if you’re like me, you eventually start finding out things you like and don’t like in potential mates and you get told things like “don’t compromise,” and “hold out for the one who’s perfect” which leads to

    a) rejection of other potential mates who, at least for the short term, would have been just fine, or
    b) clinging on to someone with whom the relationship’s use-by date has expired, or
    c) deep, sudden, intense infatuations that crash painfully and quickly, or
    d) an emotionally draining cocktail of all of the above.

    And my theory is that it’s when you get tired of dealing with these and sort out what’s really important from what’s actually not so important on the “desired qualities” list that you are suitable for really long-term pair-bonding.

    In other words, dating is an important growth experience. Likely not having dated much at 15, it’s unsurprising that the 15-year-old you would have got adult social life wrong. But it’s testament to the savvy and intelligence of the 15-year-old you that you got so many social and political extrapolations right.Report

  4. George W Bush was president. Very unpopular. In the story, he unseated President Gore in 2004

    You didn’t predict the Supreme Court would hijack the 2000 election?Report

    • notme in reply to Mike Schilling says:

      Do you want cheese with your whine? In part, Gore asked for the wrong remedy. Not to mention the SC can’t just give you more time for a recount so you can manufacture the votes you need.Report

      • Kim in reply to notme says:

        Typical Republican. Can’t trust the free fucking market to tell you who won.
        There was money riding on that election. And the bookies say Gore won the votes.Report

      • Marchmaine in reply to notme says:

        Hold on, Mike was pretty precise with his words… the Supreme Court did sort of “hijack” the process… or, more neutrally, “cut short” the process is possibly closer.

        But then each year my memory fades and I find myself wondering, what ever did happen in FL? Did Gore get more votes (in FL, that is)? And, like all things related to that election, it seems that the answer is no, but possibly maybe.

        Which echoes Notme’s comment about the wrong remedy. On yet another hand, Its hard to believe that Gore’s lawyers wouldn’t have just kept for more and bigger recounts until they found the right remedy (possibly maybe).

        This strikes me as different than the howling at the moon over the Electoral vote vs. Popular vote. As a Cubs fan, I can point out the Cahill struck out Conforto to end the 6th inning with the score tied… but it seems the rules allow for the runner to become undead and amble to first, and, worse, to allow other runners, say, from third, to race home with game winning runs all during a sort of twighlight where the batter is out, but not out. So howl sometimes we must.Report

        • nevermoor in reply to Marchmaine says:

          1) The SC had no business interfering in the state matter, and the result of that is one of the worst decisions–as a logical/structural matter–the court has made in many decades (which I would hope even conservatives could agree with).

          2) Notme is right that there is no reason to believe that Gore would have won the recount he was asking for (and also in the implication that this is Gore’s fault, because the best evidence is that a full recount would have gone to him).

          3) Either way, the number is in the ~150 vote margin range. The butterfly ballot getting 3,000 extra Buchanan (or uncountable Buchanan+real candidate) votes swamps the difference. (and yes, it was designed by a Democrat)

          4) I feel entirely justified in my sour grapes over the whole thing, since I believe Bush won only because the mechanisms of voting interfered with Floridians’ desires (and, more generally, the mechanisms of the Electoral College interfered with Americans’ desires). And, of course, Gore would have been a dramatically better president to everyone other than Africans fighting AIDS (Bush’s one legitimately excellent achievement in eight years that no one else would have done).Report

  5. Michael Cain says:

    It had a Krugmanian view of the Internet, as there and not-insignificant but also not revolutionary.

    Predicting the future was part of my job, at least off-and-on, for 25 years. Wired data networks are something I got right (mobile, not so much). In 1984 I predicted that personal processor cycles were going to get ridiculously cheap, and that connecting those to a data network would be revolutionary. In 1993 I predicted that TCP/IP would win the ongoing technology battle over which data network (even then, the telcos of the world wanted X.25 and ATM — since I worked for a telco, this made me unpopular). I missed some things, though. I thought people would serve up content from their house, not load things onto a dozen different companies’ servers. And I thought IP multicast would be really important. Multicast might still make it, if the backbone providers can ever figure out a way to bill each other for transit.Report

  6. North says:

    Fascinating, good job.Report