Gaze into the palantir, and behold...
Predictions for the Future
In 3-5 Years: The New Fear Factor
The prediction
TV will soon be filled with Fear Factor-inspired game show programs that feature straight people being "dared" into making out on camera with a same sex partner.
Why I predict this
A few years ago, TV seemed almost entirely made up of shows about eating insects (Fear Factor, Survivor, Guinness); simply because eating insects is generally considered taboo in the US, and we the viewing audience delighted in seeing people struggling to overcome this taboo. The fad has died, or is dying, out, because nobody beyond a few perverts really likes seeing insects get eaten.
However, we as a culture are blessed with another taboo that, while once inviolate, is now all the rage to flout. Of course I'm talking about gay sex. Watch contestants squirm as they consider how much money it will take to get them to French kiss another boy. It has all the taboo-shattering frisson of bug eating--while having a much wider market appeal. Whoever you are, statistically speaking you desperately want to watch either "Lesby" Open-minded or First-time Yowie! (we have three to five years to come up with better names for the shows). Even the coveted/affluent gay audience loves to watch straight boys gaying it up, and the fist "switch-hitter" program to hit the airwaves quickly becomes number one with this demographic, surpassing The New Adventures of Wonder Woman. Not only will these shows appeal to boys who love lesbian porn and girls who love yaoi, but the majority of Americans (all girls and some boys) are latent homosexuals who will live out there repressed fantasies watching their own sex go gay, while pretending to be grossed out.
Soon reality shows such as Just Curious and Walk on the Wild Side crop up with straights experimenting on camera, then wandering off-camera, and reporting next morning on their adventures. The network shows will only become passe when cable and youtube prove capable of going much farther (Sodomite for a Day), but a few societal taboos remain that we can try to coerce people into violating in the hope of fame and fortune. Watch for the Incest Channel and the afterschool favorite So You Think You Can Eat Five Pounds of Human Flesh, neither of witch promises to have the wide appeal of the dare-to-be-gay genre.
How we can use this information
Pitch a show on this theme, make millions, give me 10%.
In 50 years: No large cities in North America
The prediction
Although small cities the size of, say, Burlington, VT, will remain, large cities will be all but abandoned and nothing will remain but those people too poor to leave.
Why I predict this
Living in a city has always been a trade-off, and where you get certain amenities (proximity to job, shopping opportunities, mass transit) in exchange for enduring the pain (pollution, crime, alienation, hipsters). As the cost of city living goes up and the value goes down, fewer people will live in cities, it's as simple as that. There will come a point where it just won't be worth it.
A city's value has been going down for a while, and will only get worse, not because cities are losing amenities, but because they are losing their uniqueness. People who shop online don't need the urban shopping experience (especially as quirky stores that may stock strange or rare items are being replaced by big box stores), telecommuters don't need to live where they work, and no one needs mass transit if you never leave your house.
At the same time, the cost of living in a city increases because cities have shown themselves likely targets for attack. One or two suitcase nukes (a hypothetical at the moment, but we have fifty years to work with here) downtown and urban risk is going to loom a lot larger. Leaving aside the current Moslem hysteria, it seems likely that our ingenuity in inventing new death-rays will surpass our ability to detect them, and, as we are able to kill more and more people at once, some nut will tend to do so. If Tim McVeigh or Shoko Asahara could have come up with a deadlier plan, they would have; they were limited only by technology, and that limit is being inched upward on the bodycount.
"This is a post-9-11 theory," a friend of mine said when I brought it up to her, and, technically this is correct, insofar as I thought it up last year; but it's really a cold-war fear. It need not be terrorists blowing up the city, it could well be any number of governments in a proliferated future. Nuclear annihilation is always a possibility, but, barring that, a limited nuclear exchange will inevitably target cities. Central Park, you ain't so pretty now.
So cities start to look less attractive, and people who can afford it split for the Hamptons. As the wealthier people leave, there are fewer around to pay for the remaining amenities, and these start to fall by the wayside, driving more people away, because who wants to live in a city where the subway keeps breaking down and they can't afford to fix it? This snowball effect has been the bogeyman of some cities for decades, but we will see it on a nationwide scale.
It's not so bad out here in the suburbs, and your dog is a lot happier. A shame about the Cloisters, but you can look at those things online and remember when.
How we can use this information
There's no way to save the cities, but we can stop throwing good money after bad by giving up all long-term civic improvement plans and instead trying to build a more diffuse infrastructure.
In 250 years: End of Western Civilization
The prediction
It was a good run. Thanks for Dante, Shakespeare, Roger Bacon, and the Bill of Rights. To bad about Fox's Rock 'n' Roll Battle of the Sexes on Ice.
Why I predict this
While I'm never going to just rule out nuclear annihilation, I assume we will just keep making ourselves stupider until eventually we are unable to figure out how to repair our TVs (or 3-Vs, or Feelies, or chatrooms, or whatever), and we will starve to death on the couch, futilely pressing a button on the remote, unaware that the battery has fallen out and rolled under the sexbot.
How we can use this information
Space adventure is frankly our only hope. Other than that, ride the walrus and enjoy the "long slide to happiness."