OTL as Future History from 25 years ago

I've been wondering about a theoretical question: Imagine you would show people from the year 1984 a timeline displaying the events spanning (from their perspective) 25 years into the future? How would people from that time period view the present? Could it even pass as a run-of-the-mill dystopic Cyberpunk timeline? :D:confused:
 
I've been wondering about a theoretical question: Imagine you would show people from the year 1984 a timeline displaying the events spanning (from their perspective) 25 years into the future? How would people from that time period view the present? Could it even pass as a run-of-the-mill dystopic Cyberpunk timeline? :D:confused:

Collapse of Communism, rise of Islamic militancy, establishment of easy global communications, rise of liberal laws in some things and of authoritarian laws in others...

I am thinking that the answer to youir question depends on who the person in question IS, what country and culture they come from, at what age they married, whether they smoke, what they think of gays etc

Best Regards
Grey Wolf
 
From a 1984 perspective, anyone who said the Soviet Union collapses by Christmas 1991 would be accused of making an ASB comment.
 
From a 1984 perspective, anyone who said the Soviet Union collapses by Christmas 1991 would be accused of making an ASB comment.

Yeah, also anyone who said in 1984 that 25 years in the future that the ANC would have been running a relatively successful South African state for 15 years, and where the whites had given up power through negotiation rather than through force of arms, would also have been accused of smoking some awesome weed.
 
I've been wondering about a theoretical question: Imagine you would show people from the year 1984 a timeline displaying the events spanning (from their perspective) 25 years into the future? How would people from that time period view the present? Could it even pass as a run-of-the-mill dystopic Cyberpunk timeline? :D:confused:

Hardly. Once they got over the fact that it is almost ASB with the sudden collapse of the USSR, most people (Americans, that is) would see it as a very positive future, but one with a number of lost opportunities to build better on the collapse of totalitarianism and the rise of sucessful market oriented economies in China, Vietnam, and other places.
 

Thande

Donor
Yeah, 1984 was the time when all the FHs had the Soviet Union still around thousands of years into the future - sometimes without communism, but still always united and called the Soviet Union. Basically, I think they would have trouble wrapping their heads around a unipolar world - the two main possibilities in everyone's minds would either be the status quo continuing or both sides falling.

China's economic-but-not-social liberalisation would also probably be a surprise, as to a lesser extent would be India's moves away from statism.

The EEC becoming the EU and its corruption would probably not be a surprise but the fact that it so rapidly encompassed Eastern Europe certainly would be. I think German reunification would probably be regarded as a foregone conclusion if they accepted the idea of the fall of the Warsaw Pact, however.

The disintegration of Yugoslavia would definitely be a surprise.

I don't think the rise of militant Islam would be as big a shocker as other people have said, the Iranian Revolution and Iran-Iraq War were high-profile in 1984. The way it has proliferated to formerly secular Arab states might be, though.

Come to think of it, I think one thing they would find strange was how our leaders seem to be getting younger - Obama and Putin for a start, especially Putin considering how the former USSR was a gerontocracy.

Also from a British perspective, New Labour would not be foreseen at all, and if you managed to convince a 1984 Briton it did exist, they would be unable to understand why the SDP is still separate (merging with the Liberals) rather than rejoining it.
 
Another development that would not be forseen at all would be the birth of and exponential rise in US indebtedness to China, of all places, to the extent that the POTUS would send the SoSUS to beg the Chinese premier to keep buying US treasuries!

And I am very unhappy that our corporate/political classes allowed this to happen!:mad:
 
They'd probably see the Bush years as one hell of a strawman political, though. "So, a Republican takes over, shortly followed by terrorists blowing up New York, countries invaded at random, New Orleans sinking, and the economy imploding? Put some effort into your little anvilicious parables."

...Which is kinda funny, given the neocon joyfest of 1988-92.
 
The economic bubble of Japan might be a shocker. I remember Vonnegut and others predicting Japan just "buying" the US, much as many fear China doing today.

Japan and Korea being the great technological leaders not just in automotive but electronics, and Asia's technological rise in general would be a shock, I'd assume. I seem to recall Japan still being seen as "copycats" with no innovative skills back then.
 
The economic bubble of Japan might be a shocker. I remember Vonnegut and others predicting Japan just "buying" the US, much as many fear China doing today.

Japan and Korea being the great technological leaders not just in automotive but electronics, and Asia's technological rise in general would be a shock, I'd assume. I seem to recall Japan still being seen as "copycats" with no innovative skills back then.

In Back to the Future, Marty (from 1985) is talking to the Doc (1955). Doc complains that the parts in the broken DeLorean are Japanese, and that it's no wonder it's not working. Marty retorts by claiming that "all the best stuff [in 1985] comes from Japan".

Then again, is a movie ever a reliable historical source?
 
In Back to the Future, Marty (from 1985) is talking to the Doc (1955). Doc complains that the parts in the broken DeLorean are Japanese, and that it's no wonder it's not working. Marty retorts by claiming that "all the best stuff [in 1985] comes from Japan".

Then again, is a movie ever a reliable historical source?

Only sometimes, but you're right in this case. The Japanese had a well-earned rep for high-quality goods by the 80s.
 
They'd probably see the Bush years as one hell of a strawman political, though. "So, a Republican takes over, shortly followed by terrorists blowing up New York, countries invaded at random, New Orleans sinking, and the economy imploding? Put some effort into your little anvilicious parables."

...Which is kinda funny, given the neocon joyfest of 1988-92.

Yep, although Islamic militancy could be predicted, having well-financed terrorists somehow hijack 4 alrliners and fly three into the WTC and Pentagon sounds like something Clancy would dream up to start some sort of Rainbox Six war in the Middle East...well, I guess he sort of did. Although everyone who understands NOLA knows that hurricane like Katrina was only a matter of time, it would seem like even more deus ex machina stuff going on...what's next? People get so fed up with this undelievablly incompletent son of Vice President Bush that they elect a completely inexperienced Black Man???? With a name like what, Barack Hussein Obama???? What are you smoking??
 
In Back to the Future, Marty (from 1985) is talking to the Doc (1955). Doc complains that the parts in the broken DeLorean are Japanese, and that it's no wonder it's not working. Marty retorts by claiming that "all the best stuff [in 1985] comes from Japan".

Then again, is a movie ever a reliable historical source?

Yea, I was going on memory there. Not too good in us oldsters. :p
 
The abrupt end of the Cold War would be a big shock. Most people wouldn't be surprised that the USA ended up doing a lot of fighting in the Middle East, but they would be surprised that most of this fighting would be in or against Iraq rather than Iran or Libya (who were considered the super-bad guys in the 1980s).

China and India becoming more important economic powers would not be a surprise, but most people would be surprised at how much they have grown, especially China. Most people would expect that Japan would still be the leading economic power in Asia and the main economic rival of the US.
 

Thande

Donor
Good points about Japan, I recall reading MAD magazine from this era which painted 2000 as the USA being an economic colony of Japan. Funny how Japan has fallen from this position without ever stopping being the world's leading supplier of electronics.
 
From a 1984 perspective, anyone who said the Soviet Union collapses by Christmas 1991 would be accused of making an ASB comment.

Yeah, I remember back then we figured the USSR would have collapsed but we would have said that would happen around 2020, I did ask then as a philosophical debate, "what if the USSR became the USA and the USA became the USSR?" The way the politics have shifted in the last Presidential election, sometimes I think I might get my answer. :eek: I'll leave my politics at that. I do have an online friend through the site, Free Republic, who asked the same question I did, but he did it around the time the Soviets launched Sputnik.

Politics aside, if you told me that there would be a President named Barack Hussein Obama and showed me a picture, I would have laughed at you so hard.

9-11, well, I would think it would have been something like Tom Clancy would come up with and then I would suggest that the revenge on the terrorists would have made a good movie starring Chuck Norris.

One interesting thing, though, a co-worker said to me back in 1992 soon after the Clinton election that G.W. Bush will be elected in 2000, I thought, maybe but not really, again I was astounded.

The internet, well back then, we had Fidonet, a sort of BBS "pony express" which I used at that time.

Seeing events unfold from the 1990's on, I wonder if ASB's are real.
 
Good points about Japan, I recall reading MAD magazine from this era which painted 2000 as the USA being an economic colony of Japan. Funny how Japan has fallen from this position without ever stopping being the world's leading supplier of electronics.

I have an old "Creative Computing" magazine from 1984, I might still have it, not sure, that did a comic on the story of Japan from 1945 to 1984 and speculating to 2000 where basically, as you said, Japan would dominate the U.S.
 
Yep, although Islamic militancy could be predicted, having well-financed terrorists somehow hijack 4 alrliners and fly three into the WTC and Pentagon sounds like something Clancy would dream up to start some sort of Rainbox Six war in the Middle East...well, I guess he sort of did. Although everyone who understands NOLA knows that hurricane like Katrina was only a matter of time, it would seem like even more deus ex machina stuff going on...what's next? People get so fed up with this undelievablly incompletent son of Vice President Bush that they elect a completely inexperienced Black Man???? With a name like what, Barack Hussein Obama???? What are you smoking??
And this Black Dude essentially continues the key economic and foreign policies that were in place toward the end of Bush's incompetent son's administration???? And decides to escalate the less successful war in Afghanistan?????:eek: That's like Vietnam under Nixon, but with Muslim crazies instead of Commies! This FH guy's gotta be free-basing coke!
 
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