887: Future Timeline

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Future Timeline

Title text: Not shown: the approximately 30,000 identical, vaguely hysterical articles titled "WHITE PEOPLE IN [THE US/BRITAIN] TO BECOME MINORITY BY [YEAR]!", which came up for basically any year I put in.

Explanation

This explanation may be incomplete or incorrect: If you can address this issue, please edit the page! Thanks.

This comic uses the same strategy as comic 715: Numbers, in which Randall uses Google to search for phrases and then charts the results. This one is charted as a timeline, whereas 715 was charted as line graphs.

2101 - War Was Beginning is a reference to the famous internet meme "All your base are belong to us".

Besides the "All your base are belong to us" reference, there is not any other out and out references in the comic, the rest are actually results that you can find if you search using Randall's methods. Additionally, I'm sure "War Was Beginning" came up when he googled 2101 as well.

Transcript

THE FUTURE

According to Google search results

Events for each year determined by the first page of Google search results for the phrases:

"By <year>"	"In year"
"By the year <year>"	"In the year <year>"
"Will * by the year <year>"	"Will * in the year <year>"
"In <year>, * will"	"By <year>, * will"

2012	World population reaches 7 billion
	Flying cars reach market
	Canada cuts greenhouse emmissions to 6% below 1990 levels as per Kyoto
	Apocalypse occurs
2013	National dept paid off through President Clinton's plans
	Microchipping of all Americans begins
	Homelessness ended in Massachusets
	Health care reform law repealed
2014	US leaves Afghanistan
	GNU/Linux becomes dominant OS
2015	New Horizons reaches Pluto
	Health care law causes hyperinflation
	192 UN member nations acheive millenium development goals: Extreme poverty and hunger eradicated Universal primary education implemented Women empowerd, gender equality reached Environmental stability ensured
2016	Baby boomers begin turning 65
	Android takes 38% of the smartphone market
	Android takes 45% of the smartphone market
	Windows Phone overtakes iOS in smartphones
2017	China completes unmanned Lunar sample-return mission
	Social security stops running surplus
	US budget balanced
	Newspapers become obsolete and die out
	Cosmetic surgery doubles
2018	Social security stops running surplus
	Jesus returns to Earth
2019	Social security stops running surplus
	Every baby has genes mapped at birth
2020	Solar power becomes cheaper than fossil fuels
	Keyboards and Mice become obsolete
	New Tappan Zee bridge constructed
2021	US dept reaches 97% of GDP
	US unemployment falls to 2.8%
	Restored caliphate unifies Middle East
	Lake Mead evaporates
2022	Kilimanjaro snow-free
	HTML 5 finished
	Newspapers become obsolete and die out
2023	Jesus returns to Earth (again)
	US dept passes 100% of GDP
	All unprotected ancient forrests gone from Pacific northwest
2024	Atlantis begins to reappear
	Orangutans extinct in wild
	China lands men and women on the moon
	NASA sets up permanent moon base
	Female professionals pass males in pay
2025	World population reaches 8 billion
	Two billion people face water shortages
	62 MPG cars introduced
	US power fades
2026	Atlantis emerges completely
	Rock Bands die out
	US dept paid of
	Car accidents cease
	West coast falls into ocean
2027	Japan introduces new fastest Maglev Train
	Lyndon Larouche-Planed Mars colony is established
	Social security stops running surplus
2028	Tobacco outlawed
	40% of coral reefs gone
	US dept paid of
	Secial security stops running surplus
2029	Social security trust fund exhausted
	Computers pass the turning test
	Aging reversed
	Wikipedia reaches 30 Million articles
2030	Half of Amazon Rain Forest lost to logging
	Cancer deaths double from 2008 levels
	Arctic ice-free in summer
2031	Computers controlled by thought
	Realtors replaced by technology
	Social security trust fund exhausted
2032	"Big One" hits San Francisco
	US elects first married lesbian President
	Entire world converted to christianity
2033	Kilimanjaro ice disappears
	India becomes superpower
	Europe reaches Mars
2034	US diabetes cases double, treatment costs triple
	US builds autonomous robot army
2035	80% of America's energy comes from renewable sources
	Himalayan glaciers down 80% in size
	Arctic sea lane opens
2036	80% of US has access to high-speed rail
	Asteroid Apophis misses/hits Earth
2037	Arctic ice-free in September
	Social security trust fund exhausted
2038	32-Bit timestamps roll over, causing Y2K-level chaos
	"Big One" hits California
2039	US population hits 400 Million
	Severe heat waves become commonplace
	Scientology becomes majority relegion in US
2040	Arctic summers ice-free
	Nanotechnology makes humans immortal
2041	Social security trust fund exhausted
2042
2043	World population passes 9 Billion
2044	Mankind genetically engineered to be happy
	Childhood obesity reaches 100%
2045	Humans and machines merge
2046	World's natural resources depleted
2047	World ruled by banks and corporations
	Tobacco industry fails
	US begins using autonomous attack drones
2048	Salt-water fish extinct from overfishing
	Unisex bathing suits cover body from shoulder to ankle
	Entire US population overweight
	US begins using autonomous attack drones
2049	$1.000 computer exceeds computational ability of humanity
	Singularity occurs
	Fishing industry collapses
2050	80% of Earth's population lives in urban centers
	China controlls space
	Sex with robots possible
	Cars banned from european cities
	One Million species extinct from climate change

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Discussion

The explanation is really messed up. You can hardly tell where one year ends and the next begins. Can someone who's better at editing than me fix this, perhaps by putting a line across the page after each year? GizmoDude (talk) 19:11, 7 April 2016 (UTC)

This one slipped under the transcripting radar. I may do it. --Quicksilver (talk) 20:52, 17 August 2013 (UTC)

Do not talk about radars, just do it. The transcript is done right now, but the explain section still does need a big radar!--Dgbrt (talk) 20:20, 18 August 2013 (UTC)

Find the song! I have no idea so far but the repeating phrase "Social security trust fund exhausted" should match a refrain.--Dgbrt (talk) 20:20, 18 August 2013 (UTC)

They now have the dogs driving cars... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWAK0J8Uhzk Let's not wait for 2053.173.245.54.90 21:01, 20 March 2014 (UTC)

Out of curiosity (I'm new to the standards of explainxkcd), are out of date pages considered incomplete? Or is it up to editors to chose when to update a pages explination. I would assume the former, except that would make maintaining the pages significantly more difficult. Also, referencing the Linux takes over. Since Android is now a part of the libux kernel,should thia be changed? It would definently put linux over the 50% mark. Mrmakeit (talk) 05:03, 4 April 2014 (UTC)

Pages can not become out of date, as they refrence the meening of the comic at the time of creation. 108.162.216.209 15:24, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

I would change the 2nd paragraph to say that the entirety of the search results are a super long set-up and "All your base..." is the punch-line. Smperron (talk) 08:46, 10 November 2014 (UTC)

I would correct the entry in 2014 that says that the Taliban are the organisation responsible for the September 11th attacks. The more accurate explanation would be that The US believed Al Qaeda (the real organisation responsible) were hiding out in Afghanistan and that defeating the Taliban, and bringing stability to the country was an important stepping stone towards finding Osama Bin Laden. Of course we now know he was in Pakistan all along, but still that was the original rationale for invading Afghanistan.--141.101.98.192 15:27, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

This further details stuff is wrong about the comic. The lines are just random answers to Google searches. There is no explanation. I move to remove this table, or convert it into links or summaries of the articles in the links. This sucks. It is good enough as it is now without the table (as the table is random and the explanations on the table are incorrect. 108.162.216.209 22:12, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

Let's get to work on the table then. I'm adding suitable references to incomplete sections to aid as jumping off points, from where further expansion can be done on a case-by-case basis. Can you provide some inspiration as to which explanations are most egregiously in need of correction? Pmw57 (talk) 01:44, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

As of 2014 I have noticed that a lot of US sites are moving from html to closed sources such as Adobe so the quote: "The prediction about GNU/Linux Operating Systems is ambiguous" is now fighting through government agencies. Users of Linux trying to access the volcano archive (once supplied by listserv using linux) now have to get access via Windows machines. This has to be the saddest computing news in a long time. Weatherlawyer (talk) 08:19, 4 January 2015 (UTC)

“The prediction about GNU/Linux Operating Systems is ambiguous, as Android (based on Linux) constitutes nearly 50% of the mobile OS market” — GNU/Linux refers to an operating system consisting of the GNU userland toolchain over the Linux kernel. Android is based on Linux but not GNU, therefore, it is irrelevant in GNU/Linux context. 108.162.230.107 11:18, 23 January 2015 (UTC)

Can we change this to Incomplete explanation of the month? Foldark (talk) 22:03, 28 March 2015 (UTC)

2145:War... War never changes (the Great War happens) 173.245.54.252 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Is it just my reading, or does it say "ACHEIVE" instead of "ACHIEVE" where it says something about 192 UN member nations achieving millennium development goals in the comic? (It's under 2015.) --172.68.55.70 21:45, 10 November 2016 (UTC)

No, it reads like this for me too. (Even on the original comic page, where I'd expect it to have been long fixed already.) --172.68.11.87 19:35, 11 November 2016 (UTC)

Some of these predictions seem very realistic. 162.158.59.172 00:22, 25 December 2016 (UTC) Jawa457

I am not sure if this needs to be added or not since it was not happening when the comic was produced and it is not the government doing it but a private tech company microchipping its employees in 2017 Google results since I do not know which news articles will disappear over time. 162.158.62.231 12:03, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

I think we can delete incomplete tag. -- -- 1337-PI (talk) 04:21, 26 February 2021 (UTC) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

I feel it would have been funny, if a bit confusing, if the first few years numbers after 2037/2038 started referring to, e.g. 1970, 1971, before suddenly "Year 2038 bug finally exterminated". You know it's gonna happen... at least to some poor schmucks somewhere in the world.--Twisted Code (talk) 12:52, 22 November 2022 (UTC)

The link is bad

Here's a working one. 162.158.93.27 14:57, 22 December 2018 (UTC)

How do I add an Incomplete tag to the top? It's now 2024 so more stuff needs to be added. -- Danger Kitty (talk) 20:18, 1 February 2024 (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

You just need the {{incomplete}} template.

e.g. {{incomplete|This page will need updating to account for facts known up until the start of 2024}}, but you might instead prefer a version that follows a comment format more of Created by THE 2024 EQUIVALENT OF A BOT - Needs to be updated to the current year. Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon. to blend in with the 'starter' version currently used and then tweaked... 172.70.90.92 21:12, 1 February 2024 (UTC)