January 02, 2009 10:45am
IF YOU happen to have been depressed by the past year, stand by for some good news – we’re all going to be having more sexual intercourse in 2009.
The reason is that women’s growing economic power around the world will give them more choices, and one of those choices, apparently, will be to have more sex.
The prediction is contained in The Futurist magazine which every year compiles the forecasts and predictions of assorted visionaries. It is now out with its Outlook for 2009 and Beyond.
Perhaps that has some bearing on another forecast: “Americans may turn away from antidepressants.”
According to the anthropologist who made this call, the 100-million antidepressant prescriptions Americans take “kill the sex drive” but many may quit taking them, one surmises, so they can participate in the general randiness of women having more economic power.
Even stuff that lay people think is almost surely bad, the futurists view with equanimity.
For example: “Everything you say and do may be recorded.”
Implanted nanodevices will allow all our conversations and activities to be recorded and recoverable.
That’s because digital storage capacity will grow so large that it will be measured in “yottabytes” – 1 septillion bytes of data – allowing “the ability to record and store every second of one’s life on a computer (and no doubt post it on Facebook).”
Woody Allen said that 90 per cent of life is just showing up. Now you won’t even have to do that.
This development will come too late for some: “Retirees will increasingly return to the work force.”
This forecast didn’t say the retirees were doing it out of boredom or necessity, but implies it’s the latter.
Those oldsters going back to work will be grateful for another development: “Better blood flow, more energy, thanks to high-tech underwear.”
There’s a cautionary forecast, though: “Saving snakes may save ourselves.”
The venom of snakes may have undiscovered medicinal properties but many species are endangered.
And there’s one hardy perennial that’s been with us since at least the 1930s: “Flying cars may be on the way at last.”
The Futurist cites an entrepreneur working on designs for a Skycar that fits in a suburban garage, takes off and lands like a helicopter and flies at 610 km/h.
As unfazed by what lies ahead of us as the futurists are, no compilation of predictions would be complete without something truly apocalyptic, and here we have it: “Increases in the Earth’s temperature, no matter how slight, could trigger global mayhem and destruction.”
The Amazon rain forest would become a desert, the glaciers would disappear and, “conflict over scarce resources would most likely cause human civilisation to collapse”.
Happy 2009. Check your driveway and save your snakes.
http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,24864760-23272,00.html