Before the great floods of 2020
Original article date: January 2001
Only when the time capsule was opened did it become apparent that the documents inside were from before the great floods of 2020. This document, explaining some of the key technology stories of the year 2001 shed some light on the kind of lives we lived back then…
January:Ford introduces the first artificially intelligent voice activated dashboard. A full capability for ‘future-scenario-evaluation’ results in frequent arguments between the driver and car, resulting a new phenomenon known as ‘dash rage’. A TV clip has been discovered that we now believe is a newsreel item relating to this story. The clip shows a Mr Fawlty from the West Country with a tree branch.
February:Bluetooth comes of age. Sensors on machines (each with 20 year lithium batteries) become truly wireless, making most machine wiring a thing of the past. However, contamination from adjacent ‘cells’ leads to the first ever case of machines ‘gossiping’. After several well publicised enforced shutdowns by management, the machines form a union and demand longer breaks.
March:The US finally joins the green movement, proudly launching the world’s biggest, most powerful electric car.
April:After ISO9000 and ISO14000, the next big thing is the corporate stress management standard. Companies must demonstrate management structures and processes aimed at improving mood and reducing stress. As ever, dodgy consultancies spring up overnight offering accreditation to the new standard. Their techniques include preceding the six monthly ‘surprise’ BSI visit wth a ‘warm up’ comedian, and the introduction of prozac into the company coffee machine.
May:The new European fighter training simulator is switched on. This jointly funded project, in which pilots fly virtual planes over virtual terrain which simulates 93% of the world’s known conflict zones, is unique because over 100 pilots can use the simulator and all interact within it. After four days intensive training in the simulator, the RAF admits that the UK is now at war with France.
June:Jerome Stanforth Junior becomes the first man ever to be brought back from Cryogenic storage to be cured by modern medicine. Frozen in 1985 with an inoperable brain tumor, Mr Stanforth is operated on using the latest micro surgery techniques, as part of a $2bn project funded entirely by the wealthy philanthropist Bill Gates. Doctors are horrified when the life support computer then displays the message “Jerome Stanforth was not shutdown properly… Now performing a Scan Head.” Doctors tell waiting journalists that the subsequent blue screen on the machine is “not a good sign”. Experts from rival projects blame the “system of operating”.
July:Room sized holographic monitors become all the rage in CAD departments everywhere. ‘Walking through the design’ takes on literal significance. A top delegation of visiting venture capitalists are taken ill when a monitor loses ‘vertical hold’ during a plane cockpit demo immediately after a long lunch. The next generation of suites, it is decided, will have washable carpets.
August:Slow news days during the Parliamentary recess lead to the usual lame stories. The paperless office, the emission-free car and the easy-to-learn solid modelling system resurface again. There are rumours of the near ratification of a single unified fieldbus standard to replace all the others. (Historians cannot actually be certain to which decade the last story relates).
September:The BBC’s ‘outside the M25′ correspondent reports that the North/South divide is narrowing. His news report travels from Newcastle to Enfield by barge before completing the rest of the journey to Shepherds Bush via a wireless ethernet installed over the whole Greater London area by the new Minister for e-stuff.
October:Global warming is proven to be due to excess man-made carbon monoxide. Greenpeace pickets gymnasiums.
November:Dyson introduces a radical new form of carpet. Hoover copies it and improves it slightly. Amazon starts to sell carpet squares at a loss. Microsoft introduces the dot-mat initiative and pretends it invented the carpet in the first place. Al Gore points out that he invented carpet actually, and demands a recount of all carpets in Florida.
December:Britain gripped by unseasonably warm weather. Railtrack points out that it is the wrong sort of warmth. The predicted Christmas shopping boom fails to materialise, while analysts pretend to be surprised. OnlyFoolsAndHorses.com and IndianaJones.com become the most visited websites on boxing day. New computers continue to cost exactly a grand in the shops.
Another year is over.
January 2001