PREDICTIONS 05.08.08

The next 10 years will see a 40 percent increase in the price of food. As a result, a large percentage of Americans will adopt a vegetarian or near-vegetarian diet to save money, only eating meat occasionally, as a special treat. This will have the unintended consequence of causing the near-collapse of the various American markets that rely on the sales of meat; they will briefly be rescued by enormous government subsidies, and, eventually, by the development of inexpensive, vat-grown meat. An unexpected side-effect of this transition in the American diet will be that rice will become the dominant grain in American dishes; we will move away from our meat-and-potatoes past to have a diet that mostly closely resembles that of India.
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The next American library will be online. You will request a book, and it will be provided either digitally or simply sent through the mail.

PREDICTIONS 05.01.08

In five years, thanks to the soaring price of gasoline, the demand for public transportation will be three times what it is now, leaving most urban bus lines badly overcrowded and struggling to keep up with demand. It will also become increasingly common for people to look for housing within a short walk or bike ride from their job, and many suburbs will begin to turn into ghost towns as a result, with others becoming a sort of enclave of suburbanites who all work at nearby companies. Many businesses will try to entice new employees by demonstrating that there is a wealth of affordable housing nearby. Other businesses will relocate to the cities, and formerly abandoned downtowns will becomes thriving communal centers. The poor, in the meanwhile, will be pushed out by rising housing prices, and will sometimes need to travel 10 miles or more to get to work; for some poor people, transportation will cost 30 percent of their income.

PREDICTIONS 04.24.08

By the end of 2009, pranking will become so common in the United States, and frequently so vicious, that a National Pranking Association will form to establish ethical standards for playing pranks. Among these will be: Private property must not be destroyed; pranks that involve public humiliation are discouraged; a prank must stop if the victim of the prank requests it.
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A new Olympic event will make its first appearance in the summer of 2012: Freestyle nunchucks. These ancient fighting sticks will now be divorced from their history as a weapon, and participants will be judged on their prowess in spinning one or two nunchucks, and on the complexity and difficultly in their routine. Unfortunately, fans of the sport will be notorious for a large amount of hooliganism, with actual nunchuck battles breaking out between competing fan clubs between matches.

PREDICTIONS 04.17.08

The next few years will see the beginning of the end of radio, as radio audiences begin to move to Web-based music stations, such as Pandora Radio, which allows them to program their own taste in music and listen without commercial interruption. Talk radio will linger on for a few years after pop music radio stations shutter their doors, but only by moving to an online format where their punditry can be played through computers. By 2012, in order to get a radio in your car, it will have to be installed by a specialist; most cars will, instead, come with the ability to download and stream online radio stations.
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In 2015, robots will begin landing on mars in large quantities, sent by NASA to start the construction of the first permanent research base on Mars. In just five years, these robots will have constructed a small city, and humans will begin to inhabit the Red Planet.

PREDICTIONS 04.10.08

Most American states will have concealed carry permits within five years, and roughly 5 percent of the population will be carrying a handgun at all times. The results of this will surprise both sides of the gun control debate. Despite the increase in citizens who are armed, crime rates will neither go up nor down. Concealed handguns will so rarely be used in self-defense against crime that having a handgun on your person will be statistically insignificant when faced with street crime. At the same time, people with concealed handguns will very rarely accidentally injure or kill an innocent stranger, so carrying a handgun will not make things more dangerous, as gun control advocates worry. It just won’t make that much difference at all, in part because very few people will choose to have handguns, in part because of the rarity of the situations in which an armed civilian might need to use a handgun.

PREDICTIONS 04.03.08

A major trend in celebrity culture in the next three years will be the rejection of celebrity peer groups. America’s most famous actors and models will refuse to associate with other celebrities, and instead find peer groups consisting of interesting but fairly anonymous people. George Clooney, as an example, will count many scientists among his friends, and Brad Pitt will spend almost all his time with architects.
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By the end of 2008, 20 percent of home owners in the United States will be facing foreclosure and bankruptcy, threatening this country with a greater financial crisis than was even experienced during the Great Depression. Once budding new condominium developments will become inexpensive apartments, expensive residential neighborhoods will convert into slums, and urban blight will once again define the American city.

PREDICTIONS 03.26.08

A report published in 2010 will estimate that almost a half-million people in the United States could be classified as slaves, in that they are bought and sold as property, are not free to come and go as they wish, and make no wages for their labor. Most of these modern slaves will be sex workers, smuggled in to the United States from Africa and Eastern Europe, but some will be domestic or farm workers. This same report will make in clear that, at the time of its writing, there are more slaves worldwide than at any time in human history.
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The next presidential election will produce one very surprising statistic. Fifteen percent of voters who define themselves as Fundamentalist Christians -- a group that traditionally votes Republican -- will cast votes for Barack Obama. These votes will almost all come from people in their 20s, who statistically lean more to the center than their parents.