October 2010, Douglas Coupland wrote in the Globe and Mail A radical pessimist's guide to the next 10 years. We’re 15 years into the future and it’s worth a look back: a very 2010 kind of list, and the predictions that are the most accurate, the most relevant, are the ones that feel like misattributed quotes passed around for decades detailing some obscure truism.

However the pessimism makes for a more realistic guide to our present world, in a way a huckster, or an optimist, could never have guessed. A year later one particular idiot was predicting: Elon Musk: I'll Put a Man on Mars in 10 Years

“34) You're going to miss the 1990s more than you ever thought”

No. Please no. I get it, Douglas, you essentially helped define “generation x” and, at that point, you were only a decade away from the 90s, though predicting future nostalgia for something you were already nostalgic for is, also, not a prediction.

Others in the list feel equally dated or stick to some antiquated cliches. There’s some weird stabs at Mexican stores and vegetarianism? Like I said, some of it feels very 2010. There are obviousisms:

“22) Your sense of time will continue to shred. Years will feel like hours”

It was my birthday last week. I feel the passage of time less now than in 2010. It’s called getting older. Or it's the constant crises.

“44) Your dream life will increasingly look like Google Street View”

My dreams have looked like Google Street View since before Google Street View existed. It’s outmoded now to have thought of this as the future.

Back in 2010 it was still novel. Back in 2010¹ there was still controversy about Google Street View and its implications for privacy. It launched in 2007. In the spring of 2008 it started to blur faces. Do you remember that one year where Google Street View didn’t obscure stuff?

Those concerns seem quaint now. The American Sturmabteilung is watching you now. Billions are spent on a fascist panopticon in the USA. Dare not voice a criticism lest your entire Google account be scoured. During this surveillance nightmare Google Street View will not consume your dreams. Not unless you’re a geoguessr pro.

“25) Dreams will get better”

Coupland, who has done a lot of public art, is also credited as the creator of this piece of shit in Toronto: https://maps.app.goo.gl/71h54hMfj7G4rwtv5. I had not known this until recently. Not: “Dreams will get better.” Dream better.

“1) It's going to get worse”

Well, yeah.

“2) The future isn't going to feel futuristic”

Well, no. Everything is iterative, and ten years is a fraction of a lifetime, and partly because:

“35) Stupid people will be in charge, only to be replaced by ever-stupider people. You will live in a world without kings, only princes in whom our faith is shattered”

You lost me in the second part. However, everything is exceptionally stupid.

“45) We will accept the obvious truth that we brought this upon ourselves”

No, we will not. Is it a pessimist’s prediction, or a loser’s? I didn’t bring this upon myself, nor did the majority of people. This last week had many people digging through decade plus old emails from a certain financier, trying to determine intent through vague, and badly spelled, back and forths (in between the recommendations for Speed Garage tunes??) How did we get here?

What use are some writer’s predictions against years of investments and collusions and scheming. Why predict when you can shape? Though not necessarily the “conspiracy”, italicized and in quotes, that it is sometimes portrayed as being, the whole Epstein affair has been revealing. Epstein is a Mr. Morden² type. He was a nexus for people with influence and money and power, united through their base urges and sloppy spelling, yet one that would have manifested itself from the ooze regardless. A vile person as a product of a vile environment. If not him, someone else.

In a system based on exploitation exploiters thrive. In a system where money gives you immunity, that immunity leads to impunity. With impunity and exploitation you get horrors. On that island. In Palestine. In Sarajevo. In Congo. In the Sudan. And on and on.

After years of senseless wars, propped up on false narratives, there was a brief moment of “hope” in 2009. Almost instantly it was more of the same. It wouldn’t have been hard to be a pessimist in 2010 and extrapolate the next ten years from there, with predictions like:

“12) Expect less”

The mantra of neo-liberal leadership! Under Obama. Under Biden. Under Starmer. Under Carney.

I’m not sure a soothsayer can be a radical optimist in 2026. Things are bad! And they’re getting worse. Yet, there are cracks through which the sun shines. There is hope in picking at them. Break through the wall. Do expect less from those in power. Those that laid the bricks. Expect more from yourself and use that to prop up those around you, in your community, in whatever way you can. I’m trying to find my way. 

I’m still a strong believer of the will of the people and bottom up democracy. It’s still possible, though the window is getting narrower. That is my hope for the future. A new revolution that rights the wrongs of the last fifty years and puts all those in power to account. That is my hope and hope keeps the pessimist in me at bay.

Because if I let loose that pessimist prognosticator inside of me, my predictions for the next ten years are going to be much darker than anything Douglas Coupland could have ever written.

3) The future is going to happen no matter what we do. The future will feel even faster than it does now

1. One year later was the first known sighting of me in Google Street View. It’s still there if you know where to look

2. I had to throw a Babylon 5 reference into this writing at some point, and I’m amazed it took this long.

Related Links

How ethical is Google Street View, asks Jon Rafman in Copenhagen (December 13, 2025)

Rafman continually examines the condition of memory in the digital age, arguing that technology has fundamentally rewritten our relationship with the past. This obsession is crystallised in his film, You, the World and I (2010), an ironic retelling of the Orpheus myth where the first-person narrator performs a relentless trawl through Google Earth not for Euredyce herself, but for her image, retracing the moment a Google car drove past them on holiday.

A Letter On Justice And Open Debate About Raping Children

Does Anyone Have Harper's Email?

Canada's Neo Financial closes on $145M Series C, surpasses 1 million customers (2022)

This is an old story, though only recently did I learn that Neo, a fairly new “fintech disruptor” in Canada, from which we do have a credit card – a store branded card for a store that no longer exists – has Peter Thiel’s Valar Ventures as a big investor. One of many revelations in the latest batch of DOJ Epstein releases is that Epstein was a big investor in Valar. Unless you live entirely off the grid it’s almost impossible to not be stained by these people’s blood money.

Unrelated, but Good Internet Magazine published their Autumn/Winter issue last week. Or, at least, published its articles online. There’s a bunch of pieces there I’m going to go through. Looks like the amount of work to put it together, and the overall level of effort to get a publication out, means it’s going to turn into an annual. I have a pitch idea in my head about something for Good Internet, though before I get there I probably should support the magazine first and get it physically into my hands.

Listen to this

A few weeks ago I put together a playlist for myself of 1990s very CanCon alternative rock. The kind of very Canadian stuff I’d have heard played on 102.1 The Edge or MuchMusic. There are always some bands and tracks I always forget from that era so it was mostly an exercise in memory.

To be honest, a lot of it is just OK. Not bad, not great, but persisting solely on the nostalgia of having been overplayed 30 years ago. I added one Our Lady Peace song, one of the bigger alternative acts to emerge from that time, to the list. As a noted Our Lady Peace hater I did so out of necessity.

There are some great tracks though and it was fun rediscovering them, even during my hater of guitar era. Maybe that’s why I like The Inbred’s “Any Sense of Time” so much: it technically has no guitar; it’s a bassist and drummer duo.

Amongst all those songs there’s one I love more than ever. It still sounds great. It doesn’t feel dated, partly because of its more dubby and electronic influences. It’s danceable. And the lyrics, a political poem about the feeling of guilt trying to survive in a neoliberal world while revolutionaries are fighting for life and freedom in far off lands, are as relevant as ever.

Today I tried like hell to clear my head of troubled times

But I couldn't stop the desperation fighting for my life

Never held illusions, never fallen on pretense

While I worried how to make the rent, they put a bullet in your head

Saro-wiwa, when will this struggle end?

Losing faith in my convictions and the words that I have read

Saro-wiwa, each day so many lies

Conscience traded on the market while the poor are left to die

Apocalypse or jubilee, I just want to see the end

Sometimes I’m apocalypse, sometimes I’m jubilee, but this last week I am a year older.