Our dystopian future
If you want a picture of the future, imagine a Lime bike riding over a human face – forever.
Lime bikes rule the streets and parakeets the skies.
People get into trouble for things they’ve said while Siri or Alexa was listening.
In Parliament, ‘Hear, hear!’ is replaced by ‘Woo!’
The Conservatives promise to get immigration down from hundreds of millions to tens of millions.
There is more CCTV but also more impunity.
There is less risk but also more violence.
Machines are humanoid and people are robotic.
Toddlers start using the phrase ‘Adults should be seen but not heard.’
Responsibility and decision-making are outsourced to AI.
Politicians live in fear.
The elderly live in fear.
Public services become yet more degraded.
Women don’t go out alone after dark.
People express their desperation through the medium of the car horn.
Radio 4 responds by becoming yet breezier.
There is no distinction between public and private realms.
Sudden oak death harries Britain.
The only clean parts of the city are privately owned public spaces (POPS); everywhere else is Brooklyn chic (i.e. graffitied).
Politicians try to protect liberalism, but all their solutions are illiberal.
People vape with impunity in no-smoking areas.
Control, tracking, and monitoring are sold as tech-utopian solutions to stress and anxiety, but in fact make them worse (‘We track, you relax’-type apps).
Houses are built without windows.
Power stations use fatbergs as fuel.
People are prosecuted for not washing their hands.
Everything is banned except the following, which are compulsory:
Cannabis
Leg tattoos
Palestine marches
Lanyards
Filming everything
Tertiary school (formerly known as ‘uni’)
Wiping your feet on the seat on a train
Watching porn without earphones on a bus
Slovenly gymwear
The Two Minutes Twee
Suicide or euthanasia (whichever comes first)
What would you like to watch today, Alex, Adolescence or women’s football?
