I just finished reading Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Don’t get me wrong – he’s an eerily good science fictionist. His examination of the blurry line between real life and artificial life is as relevant today as it was forty-three years ago (and anticipates genetic engineering). But some of the details of life in the year 2021 are hard to predict that far in advance.
According to Androids, ten years from now,
- We will have flying cars.
- We will have Skype. (Yeah!)
- People with mental disabilities will be referred to as “chickenheads.”
- There will be no women in positions of power.
- The Soviet Union will come back. People will care what the Soviet Union thinks.
- We will have the technology to produce android brains so sophisticated that they are nearly indistinguishable from human beings.
- Police investigators will store information about these androids on pieces of paper.
I believe the picture is the Sean Young character from “Blade Runner,” the Harrison Ford movie based on the Philip K. Dick book.
Another prediction for 2021: Los Angeles has become a dystopia for most people, while the upper class looms above it all.
Yeah, I know the shot’s from the movie, but she’s easily recognizable, you know?