Back in January I told you how an article I wrote for Discover magazine in the year 2000 was suddenly back in the news, garnering, among other things, a mention in a CNN piece. That same Discover story was recently re-discovered by a slew of readers at the computer science news site, Hacker News, sparking a thread of nearly 150 comments.
The thread is here, if you want to check it out.
A reminder: The 20-year-old Discover story asked scientists, physicians, and other experts to predict what life would be like in 2020. “What You’ll Need to Know in 2020 That You Don’t Know Now,” appeared in the September 2000 issue of the science magazine. Among other things, we reported that in 2020 we’d need to know how to talk to our homes, that we’d fret a lot about our online reputations, and we’d need to have our irises scanned to board aircraft. All sorta, kinda true, as the folks discussing it on this thread point out.
There are certainly some quibbles among the comments, which is what makes these kind of things interesting.
Does that mean I’m an “old” writer?
“Prepare Yourself for 2020”
If you’re interested, my original story lives on the Discover magazine website.
The CNN article is here. (My article is mentioned late in the piece.)
If you’re into science, my Discover story also appears in my nonfiction book, The Scientist and the Sociopath, which is a collection of my best science writing.
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