Fifteen Minutes: Endpaper: Back to the Future

These days, everything is millenium this, millenium that; Y2K this, Y2K that.

The U.S. Post Office has a clock counting down the time to the year 2000. Does anyone know what will happen when it reaches zero? NBC is promoting Y2K The Movie as part of its November sweeps week. And the only bug more famous than Jiminy Cricket is on the minds of every computer scientist, air traffic controller and politician.

And while everyone seems to be making a big deal about what will happen the precise millisecond when December 31st, 1999 turns into January 1st, 2000, I'm not worried one bit. And it's not because I've stockpiled canned goods in my apocalypse bunker or that I've taken all of my money out of the bank and put it under my mattress in fear that bank records will be lost.

It's because I know what is going to happen. When the calendar changes, it'll read 1980, not 2000. The clock strikes 12, the years run down, hickory dickory dock.

That's right--1980. As in the year most members of the class of 2002 were born. We're going back to the year when Ronnie was elected president, John Lennon died and MTV was still a year away.

How do I know? Simple. We're not ready for the millenium yet.

The year 2000 has always been The Future. Whenever someone talks about The Future, we know it's some time A.Y2K (Anno Millenia). 2000 is a watershed year in our history, our culture and our consciousness--a cause for both hope and concern.

In the 1950s and 1960s, in the pages of Popular Mechanics and Life magazine, The Future was characterized as a time when smiling housewives didn't have to worry about doing the housework because their robots would do the work for them. The Donna Reeds of the world would have more time to spend with their kids instead of laboring over daily chores. Forgot to cook that four-course meal, Mom? Just put meal capsules on the plates. The kids'll be patting their stomachs in a few seconds.

"The Jetsons," the "Flintstones" of The Future, also came out of this era of optimism. George Jetson and family were used to paint a complex picture of The Future--one that was aided by convenience but also one that subtly showed George as a pawn in the Spacely Sprocket empire--a de-humanization of the American worker through technology.

By 1968, visions of The Future were carrying that theme even farther. Stanley Kubrick immortalized the year some people feel is the real millennial year in his movie "2001: A Space Odyssey," a film clearly set in The Future. In it, HAL, a dangerous supercomputer, shows that technology could be destructive, warning us to be careful as we progress. (You know, I've always thought those new iMacs looked a little suspicious.)

In 1982, Disney opened Epcot Center in Orlando with "Spaceship Earth" as its centerpiece. The exhibit/ride, housed in the most famous geodesic sphere in the world, shows "dazzling scenes of life in the 21st century's Global Neighborhood depict[ing] every corner of our world drawn closer through new technologies." The ride, in true Disney-esque fashion, revisits the themes expressed in the 1950s magazines--perfect family life made easier through human advances.

Finally, a decade ago, Robert Zemeckis brought us Back to the Future II. Michael J. Fox's Marty McFly introduced us to the practical potentials of The Future--hoverboards, flying cars and two-way televisions, all by the year 2015.

But in the last 10 years, as 2000 has drawn closer, we have stopped dreaming about The Future. There was just too much that needed to happen before we'd be in a position to achieve the hopes we originally had for it. We aren't close to the Donna Reed 1950s Space Age ideal. In fact, Donna Reed largely doesn't exist anymore. As fewer women choose to be housewives, the need to create Rosie the Robot has ironically fallen by the wayside. Flying cars aren't anywhere near the horizon. We're just getting started with alternative automobile fuel sources like ethanol, electricity and solar power. Food capsules? Forget it. We're still working on genetically enhancing our food, not shrinking it into little pills.

At the same time, the negative predictions of The Future haven't really come true, either. We're not on pace to have a world run completely by thinking computers. There are no outward indications of an impending apocalypse that many have predicted. Nor are there any serious signs of a second coming.

I suppose other far-off prophecies that should have already happened haven't come true, either. We passed right by 1984 without falling under the watchful eye of Big Brother, as was predicted, or at least forewarned, in George Orwell's 1984. And how many predictions do you think the great Nostradamus missed? It seems that the only source to credit him with any degree of accuracy has been the Weekly World News.

So I see two courses that history could take on the eve of the millenium. The first course is linear. We progress in our technological achievements and eventually we conquer the mysteries of flying cars and food capsules. We push our notion of The Future back a few years. Maybe The Future will become sometime after 2025 or 2050 or 2100.

The other course is cyclical. We travel back in time to a point where we will have adequate time to prepare for The Future. Another 20 years will put us in a better position to sufficiently plan for The Future. And since we are 20 years off, we must be going back to 1980.

We've only hit a millennium once before, and the records from that one don't specify much about the event. We really don't know what'll happen when the end of December rolls around. That's the whole idea behind the Y2K bug hype. The possibilities for disaster are real enough to scare us.

But turning back the clock to 1980 is something we don't have to be frightened of. We've been there before and we know what it's about. And this will give us the chance to make the decade even better.

First order of business: to do something about those Flock of Seagulls haircuts.

William P. Bohlen '01, a government concentrator in Pforzheimer House, plans on spending New Year's Eve with his family, sheltered from the strains of Prince's "1999," or even worse, Ricky Martin's "Livin' La Vida Loca."