In The Year 2525

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I woke up this morning with the song 2525 running through my head. Whoa, a blast into the past. Do you remember it? “In the year 2525, if man is still alive, if woman can survive”... This glimpse into a dark future by Zager & Evans from 1969 contained a lot of predictions and, perhaps for the sake of rhyme, indicated that man would be around for thousands more years than I personally think he will. But, just for the heck of it, I thought I would have a look at those predictions. 3535 “Ain't gonna need to tell the truth, tell no lie Everything you think, do and say Is in the pill you took today” Well, the prediction is partially true. We don’t need pills, though. Facebook and Google both tell us what is trending so we will know what to read and think. Then we can be sure we are just like everyone else. Predictive text on our mobile devices will guess what we mean, and try to spell it correctly for us. Thinking is individualism, and society has never appreciated that. Social media was invented to stamp it out completely. 4545 “You ain't gonna need your teeth, won't need your eyes You won't find a thing to chew Nobody's gonna look at you” This is obviously a prediction about people communicating over the internet where no one can see them and drinking smoothies made in their Nutribullets. Spot on. 5555 “Your arms hangin' limp at your sides Your legs got nothin' to do Some machine's doin' that for you” We are headed into the robot age and driverless cars. Another prediction that came true early, as the song doesn’t expect this to happen until 5555. 6565 “You won't need no husband, won't need no wife You'll pick your son, pick your daughter too From the bottom of a long glass tube” Actually, test tube babies are pretty old hat. Been doing that for decades. Now science is busy growing sperm in the lab so men will become unnecessary and combining DNA in embryos so everyone can have three parents instead of two. So, the songwriters got it all right. Unfortunately for us, the timeline is much shorter than they expected it to be. Personally, you can take me back to 1969. Everything is a blur after that anyway.