Douglas Coupland: "A radical pessimist's guide to the next 10 years"

Source: The Globe and Mail

The iconic writer reveals the shape of things to come, with 45 tips for survival and a matching glossary of the new words you'll need to talk about your messed-up future.

... 6) The middle class is over. It's not coming back

Remember travel agents? Remember how they just kind of vanished one day?

That's where all the other jobs that once made us middle-class are going – to that same, magical, class-killing, job-sucking wormhole into which travel-agency jobs vanished, never to return. However, this won't stop people from self-identifying as middle-class, and as the years pass we'll be entering a replay of the antebellum South, when people defined themselves by the social status of their ancestors three generations back. Enjoy the new monoclass!

... 9) The suburbs are doomed, especially those E.T. , California-style suburbs

This is a no-brainer, but the former homes will make amazing hangouts for gangs, weirdoes and people performing illegal activities. The pretend gates at the entranceways to gated communities will become real, and the charred stubs of previous white-collar homes will serve only to make the still-standing structures creepier and more exotic.

Read more: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/a-radical-pessimists-guide-to-the-next-10-years/article1750609/singlepage/#articlecontent

On Caprica, SyFy's prequel to the seminal and critically-acclaimed re-imagining of the 1970s series Battlestar Galactica, the Cylons are born as a result of a computer program that reassembles all the day-to-day data- shopping records, travel logs, internet posts, telephone calls, and on and on- into a virtual being that is indistinguishable from the "real" you, and which exists in what can only be called "the cloud". This is seen by the STO (the radical terrorist followers of the One True God) as a way to cheat death, and later forms the seed of the Cylon concept of "resurrection".

i HATE sifting through website after website trying to figure out all the details of every goddamned trip.

and since EVERYTHING is a 'deal' -- i never feel like i've gotten any deal.

Because so many people were afraid to fly. There was a domino effect and most of them simply shut down. I remember reading about it. I booked my first vacation ever to New York on Expedia the next year and got a huge discount on the flight and on the hotel. When I got to the hotel I had the confirmed email printout with me and they didn't know what it was. It was obvious they'd never seen it before, but my hotel reservation was in their system. I actually got some dirty looks as if they thought I was successfully pulling some scam on them.

Edited for spelling

he is correct Free Market Principles give Business absolute
freedom with no responsibility to the country or employees
Business's only responsibility is to its investors.
This means only one thing, the wealthy starting with the
advantage continues to reap the profits.

There is no commitment to the common good. This requires
regulation. In a Democracy, Regulations are required to
promote fairness among the various groups. Right sees this
as redistribution. Business should have absolute freedom
They do not concern themselves with the poor. Since their
constituents are for the most part in the top tier, having
lkower classes and underclasses does not concern them

We have not been able to push back as much as we need, the
poster has some good points We are on the road to Third
World status

I laughed nervously in some parts...

DOOOOOOOOOOOMED!