According to the ’80s, we are supposed to be in the future now: flying cars, food pills, hoverboards… the whole shebang. Back to the Future II promised us it would be all that and more, but all we got is a janky hoverboard that needs a special ramp to barely work and rumors that Nike almost has those auto laces from Marty McFly’s shoes figured out. We don’t even have Ronald Reagan trying to sell me Pepsi from a TV screen in a restaurant yet. What the fuck, 2015?

The disappointment that is 2015 should not be repeated. Robert Zemeckis and Co. took a crack at it 25 years ago and came up with bupkis. When we look forward 25 years to 2040, do we want to be so wrong again? If we can’t trust Hollywood to tell us the future, who should we trust? It’s got to be someone that we can all agree knows what the fuck he or she is talking about (Sorry, Bob!). This person must have a history of making great predictions the world can actually count on.

Personally, I think you should trust me. I’m great at making predictions. For example, I predicted that you would be reading this sentence at this very moment. I know, it’s amazing! I’ve been honing my remarkable skills for nearly three-and-a-half decades and my results speak for themselves. Some of my other greatest predictions include microwaveable breakfast sandwiches, 24-hour donut spots, Silly String, HTTP 404 errors, Dogecoin, Vice President Joe Biden and the great German monkey abandonment perpetrated by that bastard, Justin Beiber.

Now that you’ve got a glimpse of my bona fides, I’m sure you’ll agree that Bocephus is the right man for the predicting job; in fact, I already knew you would. That’s just how good I am. But enough with the formalities; the true test of a soothsayer is in his predictions. I’ve focused my incredible powers to look forward in time and witness the follies and fortunes of humankind in the year 2040 and I think you will be amazed by what I have seen. The visions I’ve had could fill volumes, but some would be too devastating for the world to know at this time. Instead, I will leave you with three predictions of our future to come.

In the year 2040, after safely being sworn into her second term as President of the Americas, Miley Cyrus will declare that henceforth, clothing is optional at all times. A special UV-resistant sun block spray engineered from one of the government’s own strains of super weed (a popular seller known as Lady Liberty) will be made available to all citizens to protect their naked flesh from the sun’s blistering rays. It will later be determined that repeated use of the government’s UV-spray leads to heart valve development defects in fetuses. The condition will come to be known as “Achy Breaky Heart,” much to President Cyrus’ chagrin.

But enough with politics. I know you are here to find out about the technology of the future. Well, let’s just say that in 2040, flying cars will be considered old school. Instead, the hot form of travel for the Joneses of 2040 will be flying boats! An enterprising young inventor will rediscover the idea after stumbling upon 26-year-old copies of Submerge and reading an article by a well-known author, Bocephus Chigger, on the topic of seaplanes. Plus, with a large portion of the world’s roadways washed away after the North Pole melts, flying boats will just seem like a better idea than cars.

Finally, in the year 2040, The North Pacific garbage gyre will have collected enough bits of garbage and plastic that a new continent will begin to rise out of the ocean and take shape. The inhabitants of the island will rapidly mutate due to the variety and levels of toxins in their environment. Fortunately for them, the mutations will allow people of the plastic and garbage island to meet their dietary requirements through the consumption of the very plastic under their feet.

The Plastic People, commonly referred to as “Stickys,” will be both cherished for cleaning up the planet and reviled for eating plastic by the rest of the world. Skirmishes will break out at sea as giant abandoned fishing nets are used by the Stickys to set up a blockade on the world’s remaining shipping lanes. What will President Cyrus and the other leaders of the free world do to quell the storm? Find out in 2016 when we look 25 years into the future again to 2041 and the conclusion of the Plastic Wars!

Bocephus Chigger
bocephus@submergemag.com

With less than three years to go, the future is almost here. Massive changes are on the horizon that will affect nearly every aspect of our daily lives, hopefully for the better. How do I know these changes will happen? Because, thanks to Hollywood, I’ve seen the future.

In 1989, my 9-year-old self watched breathlessly as Marty, the Doc and a soon to be unconscious Jennifer flew into the future. When they arrived to stop the meddlesome Griff from ruining Marty Jr.’s life, the display on DeLorean dashboard read Oct. 21, 2015.

Three years doesn’t give us much time; fortunately, we’ve already made some headway. Three promises from the future are here now. Like Marty Jr., we Americans love watching more than one TV channel at a time. Marty Sr. was a big fan of the videophone in 2015 and Skype and Facetime have brought this mostly unused novelty to the present. Finally, the Café ‘80s showed us that, in the future, Ronald Reagan would be used to shill Pepsi and hamburgers. While this one hasn’t quite happened yet, the Republicans almost unveiled a holographic Ronald Reagan at this year’s Convention in Tampa, Fla.

Clearly we are off to an excellent start, but what of all the future advances left to come? Much of what was shown to us in the film falls into two distinct categories. Our first chunk of future fantastic is going to come to us through the fashion world. Tired of buying clothes that just don’t seem to fit once we get them home, big timers in the fashion world, like next year’s Project Runway winner, will push the envelope and end this dilemma with the self adjusting (and self-drying) jacket.

Americans are constantly pushing the envelope, and by envelope, I mean the tensile strength of their pants. We are getting fatter and nothing in the film says that is going to change. In the future, not being able to see your feet over your fat gut may be common, but it won’t be a problem because we will have self-tying shoes. Lest you think laziness is our destiny, the professional male population of the world should take note that we will soon be required to wear two neckties. As a lawyer, I am not looking forward to this at all.

Of course, the future isn’t just for the clothes horses; 2015 has stuff for the tech geeks too. We were introduced to two future technologies right in the beginning of the film, and they are game changers. It may be hard to believe, but in just three short years we are going to have flying cars that are powered by fusion reactors that run off garbage. Not convinced that this will be the case? Take a drive down Highway 99 and see for yourself that the government is already tearing up all of these soon to be worthless roads.

Oddly enough, the future isn’t all about advancements. Some of our current and most relied-upon technologies seem to be absent in 2015. No mentions are made of the Internet, let alone silly cat videos, in the future. No doubt the Web will be eliminated soon to prevent hackers from taking over the world. But what of our cell phones? We can still get on the Internet from there, right? Unfortunately, I think the answer is no, as we see Marty Jr. using a pay phone in 2015, and there wasn’t one idiot yapping away on his cell phone in the Café ‘80s.

No Internet or cell phones means no emails or text messages and America’s grasp of the English language is already too far-gone to expect us to return to handwriting letters. With few options left, the future has gone way back into the past and dug up what is now considered a pretty worthless technology: the fax machine. Remember; put your document in face up if you want the recipient to be able to read it!

With only three years left, we have a lot of work to do. Some of these changes are here already and others really just require us to forget the advancements we’ve made already. But the real challenge lies in all of the things we haven’t invented yet and there is only one way those ideas will come to fruition. So think, McFly, think!

-Bocephus Chigger
bocephus@submergemag.com