It’s obviously very late in the year to be doing a list of predictions for 2010. Even a faked post ‘predicting’ what has actually happened in the last ten months wouldn’t exactly be riveting reading. iPads, Glee and the General Election, yawn. So I’m going to tackle the whole decade, which is still relatively young. Plus, you might be one of those bores that insist that a decade properly starts in ’01′, in which case I’m actually early.

So let’s take a little look into what the next ten years will bring us, using whatever may be your time-machine of choice; Delorean, Phone-booth, Time-gate, Stasis Leak or Hot Tub.

Music and Film

Media in the 2010s continues the same self-referential path it’s been treading for the past 30 years, just to a further extent. In 2012, Gone With The Wind is ‘re-imagined’ as a Jennifer Lopez comedy vehicle. With a modern injection of sass ‘I Give a Damn 3D’ adds a fist fight to the ending, and quickly becomes the most downloaded film from ‘Richard & Judy’s iPlayer Club’, who say “Frankly my dear, it’s damned brilliant!” Other classics in the pipeline to be remade in 2020 include Epic Movie, Gus Van Sant’s Psycho and a fifth Hulk.

The 80s quickly passes as the nostalgic era of choice in 2011, to return in 2013. In 2012 the ‘loop of retro’ becomes ever smaller, as a different decade is celebrated and then derided within each calendar month. January sees a revival in 90s Thrillers, February has 50s musicals and March is all about 80s sex comedies. This means many films can find a different audience depending on the time of year it is released. When The A-Team 2 opens on February 25th, it is panned. A-Team 3, released in October, manages to tap into the 80s tea-time TV revival of that month, and is praised for its finely crafted irony.

Music too becomes victim to this new whirlwind of self-referentiality. Kanye West’s 2015 album ‘AWESOME’ is the not the first to use samples from his own songs, but it is the first to take them from earlier in the same verse. Album closer ‘I am (I am {I AM}) Brilliant (Brilliant {BRILLIANT})’ is really just the same line looped and recorded from itself again and again for 6 minutes, quite like the sound you get when someone phones up a radio station and doesn’t turn their own set down.

In 2017 a survey shows that 96% of youngsters believe that the entire output of music leading up to the year 2000 was produced by either Madonna, The Beatles or Johnny Cash. In 2019, the soundtrack to Beatles Rock Band 5 is named ‘Best Album/Ringtone of All Time’ by Rolling Stone magazine.

In 2013, after the release of their fourth self published free-to-download album ’4.9P/PER/KB HA HA’ the music buying public are shocked to find out that Radiohead part own the Internet, after someone figures out the code hidden within their album title. It is revealed they make money for every download simply through the cut they take from ISPs they bought with the profits from Creep in the mid-90s, and that their anti-commercialism stance has just been a meticulously constructed act. The online furore continues through 2014, until some points out that obviously they’re still making money for every angry tweet, email and blog post, so everyone just stops mentioning it.

Technology

Newspaper sales continue to fall in the 2010s, as free online sources mature to replace them. In 2013, the last print paper The Daily Mail stops publication, blaming its steady decline in sales on ‘hoodies with mobile phones’. The Peoples Paper, the online hub of pooled ‘citizen journalism’, announces its passing in October that year with the headline ‘Nws papers R finally daed!’(sic). Some other publications do continue in online form, with paid content available behind a paywall. ‘Tom Cruise News’, the leading Scientologist publication, offers 1 day access for £1.50, a weeks for £5 and the a ‘Premium News’ service with the answers to life’s greatest questions for just £50 a month.

In 2013 the first person becomes married over Twitter, and by August 2014 their story is made into a movie. In September that year someone transcribes the movie into text speak in order to retell the story in its original format. In 2015 15,235 people propose to their partners by simply Retweeting dialogue from their story.

By 2016 the online trend is very much on keeping things to yourself. After the ‘Summer of Unemployment’ in 2015, caused by someone exposing the huge amount of incriminating sackable evidence employees had posted on Facebook in the 2000s, youngsters returned to being shuffling lonely individuals, keeping diaries and being fearful of others. Fortunately, MySpace returns to the social media fray offering an application that let’s you save your diary online. Unfortunately, they then sell a generation of youngster’s fears and worries to advertisers in 2019.

By 2020, 93% of businesses use ‘Google New Wave’, and social networking has regressed back to people updating their Friends Reunited profiles. Those with a passion for all things ‘retro’ often meet up with each other in pubs and restaurants, engaging in conversation face to face.

Whilst a bad decade for many large tech companies, Apple continues its growth in the consumer market. In 2012 it finally figures out an effective solution for their long suffering Apple TV service. After lengthy deals with content suppliers, ground-breaking ‘Arial’ technology allows seamless play of licenced content in a linear format. Steve Jobs announces the service in a lavish presentation while hanging from wires between the pyramids in Egypt. “Boom! Live streaming video that plays all day. You can literally just turn it on and see what’s playing! We call it ‘TV’!” By 2019 they’ve shifted 5 million of the £499 devices and the world’s living rooms are changed forever.

Fashion

After the High Street crash of 2014, and with no shops around to sell clothes, the whole fashion industry collapses. With no new clothes available, the fashion conscious are forced to exchange and swap between each other, as every single item of clothing becomes classed as ‘vintage’. With items in such high demand, and supplies obviously limited, clashes over 2006 American Apparel leggings, or a 2009 pair of Gap jeans are not uncommon. By 2018, women wrestling over 1950s brouches becomes a spectator sport in West London.

Most of the high street shop spaces are quickly taken over as ‘pop-up’ bars and restaurants, and filled with snooty well-dressed hipsters. To some this makes them indistinguishable from their former purposes as fashion retailers, and many window shoppers remain unaware of any change to the high street for another couple of years.

The ongoing repurposing of buildings into hip temporary bars continues to infect the East End of London. By 2013 most launderettes, dentists and pharmacists host fashion shows, DJ nights and knitting evenings. In 2014 new London Mayor Will Young decrees Old Street and onwards to be just one permanent Private View, and that cheap red wine shall be provided on tap for those with a Hackney postcode.