Photo by Flickr user pasukaru76; used under Creative Commons Attribution license.
As 2009 winds down to its conclusion, much is being made of the decade drawing to a close, inspiring “best of” and “worst of” lists galore. But what about the decade that’s about to begin? Follow us as we use our Jedi powers to see the future and divulge to you the ten most significant geeky news stories of the 20-teens.
June 10, 2011 - The Apple iTablet is finally unveiled, to wide acclaim. World peace follows within a month, causing Steve Jobs to be awarded the 2012 Nobel Peace Prize. Jobs declines the honor unless the Norwegian Nobel Committee agrees to rename the award “The Nobel Apple iPeace Prize.”
March 6, 2012 - Not content with trying to convince parents that vaccines are evil, Dr. Andrew Wakefield and Jenny McCarthy give impassioned speeches pointing out that a statistically very high percentage of the people diagnosed with autism were, at some point in the past, born. Unfortunately for them, the popularity of Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader enlightens the general public to what the Scientific Method really means in a coherent manner. Torches and pitchforks ensue.
December 3, 2013 - FOX cancels Joss Whedon’s fourth installment of Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog on general principle, despite having nothing whatever to do with it.
July 19, 2014 - At Comic-Con, a geek celebrity harmonic convergence occurs when, from 1:03pm to 1:14pm Pacific Time, Wil Wheaton, Jonathan Coulton, Neil Gaiman, Joss Whedon, Adam Savage, Felicia Day, Nathan Fillion and J.J. Abrams are all in the same room at the same time. Geeks the world over, without knowing the reason why, look up from their laptops and smart phones and turn to face towards San Diego.
April 1, 2015 - The Wall Street Journal, the last major U.S. newspaper still being printed, ceases publication. When the news appears on WSJ.com, readers at first take it for an April Fools’ Day joke, until all seven remaining subscribers confirm that their copies failed to arrive. The story of the newspaper’s demise quickly falls off news websites’ front pages a few hours after appearing, due to the emergence of the 508th alleged mistress of Tiger Woods.
March 28, 2016 - The day after Easter, stores begin displaying Christmas items in preparation for the holiday season. Signs warning consumers that they have “Less than nine shopping months left!” appear on websites and public transit vehicles.
May 24, 2017 - To celebrate the fortieth anniversary of the premiere of Star Wars, George Lucas releases a new Special Edition of the original trilogy using technology stemming from James Cameron’s Avatar. In the new version, Han runs away from Greedo without shooting him, and the forest moon of Endor is replaced by Naboo. The consequent digital transformation of Ewoks into Gungans provides evidence to generations of fans that the Ewoks really weren’t so bad after all.
June 5, 2017 - For the first time ever, monthly U.S. sales (for May, that is) of fuel-cell automobiles surpass those of gas-electric hybrids (sale of pure internal-combustion vehicles having been banned as of January 1, 2016). Peak Oil experts, having lost a chief target for their cause, switch topics as a group to become Peak Hydrogen experts, starting the whole cycle all over again.
Colonel Savage
January 23, 2018 - U.S. President Tiffany Franklin opts to deliver her first State of the Union address via text message. The address reads, in its entirety, “d USA S doiN gr8! GBY n God bl$ d USA!”
February 11, 2018 - Adam Savage, now age 50, disappears from existence during a MythBusters shoot attempting to recreate Doc Brown’s time-traveling DeLorean from the Back to the Future movies. Shortly thereafter, a Western Union courier arrives to deliver a letter to Jamie Hyneman, explaining that Adam went back in time to late-1920s Kentucky and lived the remainder of his life as Colonel Harland Sanders. In hindsight, MythBusters fans everywhere wonder how they could have failed to notice this earlier.
Have a happy new year… and decade!
