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.

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.