Top 10 predictions for 2015
The other day, I was listening to a squeaky-voiced pundit offering his predictions for e-Technology developments in the coming year.
Everything would be “smart,” he said.
Our home heating and appliances would be run by smart meters; our cars would be run by smart computers. And of course, smartphones would become even more smart than they already are.
It’s not the most brilliant prognostication, considering most of these things already exist.
He gets all his information, by the way, from only the best experts and the best sources, which he somehow has an innate ability to sniff out.
I find this prediction business so annoying. It’s more of a fairground gimmick than anything else.
Some people are good at it, mind you. In the 1960s, Isaac Asimov shunned a lot of the utopian nonsense and came up with some fairly accurate visions.
By now, Asimov said, we’d be mostly a race of machine tenders (sort of true, if you include our obsession with mobile devices) and that we’d be using flat screens for everything from reading documents to viewing video and images.
Contrary to the “Jetsons” mindset, he predicted that humanoid robots would still only be a novelty.
Not bad for a 50-year outlook. I can’t even predict what I’m having for lunch most days.
Nonetheless, on this last day of 2014. I am compelled to play along with the annual guessing game. So, here are my predictions for the coming 12 months:
1. Former Wildrose party leader Danielle Smith will break ties with Alberta Premier Jim Prentice when she discovers he’s been cheating on her with Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi.
2. Allan Hawco will begin shooting his new film “The Doyle Supremacy.” Someone will punch him in the face.
3. McDonald’s Restaurants will announce a merger with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. In September they will launch their new flagship program, “The McNa-
tional.”
4. The Liberals will win the provincial election, and Deputy Premier Steve Kent will lose his Mount Pearl seat to Kurtis Coombs in a recycling box tie-breaker. Coombs will propose legislation to ban all recycling in the province.
5. Wales will announce plans to secede from the United Kingdom. TV news channels will not cover it because no one will know how to pronounce the separatists’ names.
6. Seamus O’Regan will drop his bid for St. John’s South and return to Toronto to host a new show called “Smiley Time Station.” No one notices, so NDP MP Ryan Cleary will lose his seat to him anyway in the federal election.
7. Apple will launch its new iPhone 8. It will come with a bracket that attaches directly to your nose.
8. The European Space Agency will send a new probe to the dwarf planet Pluto. Ten years later, it will land in a no-parking zone in Wisconsin and get towed.
9. Lorraine Michael will step down as leader of the NDP party. Ryan Cleary will run for the post but lose it to Steve Kent.
10. Richard Branson will abandon his space travel ambitions, but retain his title as world’s richest clown.