Future Timeline
by Jeff
Image text: Not shown: the approximately 30,000 identical, vaguely hysterical articles titled "WHITE PEOPLE IN [THE US/BRITAIN] TO BECOME MINORITY BY [YEAR]!", which came up for basically any year I put in.
This comic uses the same strategy as comic 715, in which Randall uses Google to search for phrases and then charts the results. This one is charted as a timeline, whereas 715 was charted as line graphs.
2101 - War Was Beginning is a reference to the famous internet meme "All your base are belong to us". EDITED to add "are".
Besides the "All your base are belong to us" (EDITED to add "are") reference, there is not any other out and out references in the comic, the rest are actually results that you can find if you search using Randall's methods. Additionally, I'm sure "War Was Beginning" came up when he googled 2101 as well.
April 18th, 2011
“2026: Rock bands die out.”
That’s when I’ll lose all hope for humanity.
April 18th, 2011
If we’re to take all this as fact, can we blame everything later than next year on the apocalypse?
April 18th, 2011
Even the subsequent apocalypsi? (Jesus returning, Disastrous Global Warming, World Economy in the crapper). Actually, nearly half the predictions on this list are apocalyptic.
April 18th, 2011
The proper phrase is “All your base are belong to us”.
April 18th, 2011
Thanks JJ – I’ve updated the post. Not sure why I missed the “are” in there 2x.
April 18th, 2011
The phrase is “All your base are belong to us”.
April 18th, 2011
I thought that “2029 – Computers pass Turing Test” could be a ‘Terminator’ reference, but Skynet activated in 1997/2011; The first Arnie Terminator was sent back from _2029_, though.
April 18th, 2011
2023 – US debt passes 100% of GDP
2026 – US debt paid off
Sounds like the 32 bit timestamp isn’t the only thing that’ll roll over.
April 18th, 2011
I’m just seeing if I understand his algorithm. He takes a year, and types in those 8 phrases he has at the top, combines all the page 1 results from google, and takes the most common ones of those 8 pages to include in the timeline?
April 18th, 2011
Orbitton, one line was missed between 2023 and 2026:
2023 – US debt passes 100% of GDP
2026 – Atlantis emerges completely [buys US, moves all cars and rock bands to the west coast]
2026 – US debt paid off
2026 – West coast falls into the ocean
2026 – rock bands die off
2026 – car crashes cease
April 18th, 2011
Am I the only one that noticed that newspapers died out 3 times?
April 18th, 2011
.. The rest of us paid sufficient attention to notice that most things happens more than once — especially the US Debt being paid off and exceeding 100% GDP within the same years.
April 18th, 2011
He also forgot First Contact in 2063. Really disappointed.
April 18th, 2011
I don’t think so. “Spacecraft exceeding the speed of light” might be a reference to the warp flight of the Phoenix. But speculating might be illogical…
April 18th, 2011
Wow, I totally missed that one! That’ll work!
April 18th, 2011
I like how whatever else happens, Social Security will still keep on chuggin’ (and keep on running out of money).
Oh, and the “war was beginning” is a reference to the poorly-translated into to the game Zero Wing, in which the first lines are “In A.D. 2101 / War was Beginning”. (Yes, Zero Wing was the source for the “all your base” meme.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_Wing
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Zero_Wing
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_your_base_are_belong_to_us
April 18th, 2011
2014: Year of the Linux Desktop.
Finally!
April 18th, 2011
I am using a Linux desktop to write this comment…..
April 19th, 2011
I am using android to xrdp into my linux machine to write this comment.
April 19th, 2011
I am using butterflies to write this comment.
April 19th, 2011
Im typing with my nose.
April 19th, 2011
Was this googled with pages from US only?
April 19th, 2011
As the commenter below says, Brits are included in the image text, not to mention a number of references to events in Europe. The answer would really be that he apparently only googled English-language pages. Considering that the English-speaking internet is heavily dominated by US users, by sheer virtue of population size, the results are strongly skewed towards American-oriented pages.
I’m sure there were results from other countries, they just weren’t on the first few pages. Googling in another language or multiple languages would almost certainly have gotten very different results.
April 19th, 2011
The image text mentions frantic white Brits, so I’d guess not.
April 19th, 2011
2038 y2k bit is references http://xkcd.com/607/
April 20th, 2011
It’s the other way around. Rather than this comic referencing 607, both comics reference the fact itself (that a 32-bit time integer system time will roll over in 2038).
April 20th, 2011
2063 is the best year.
April 20th, 2011
Totally. (but apparently “Totally” by itself was too short to be accepted as a comment, so I had to go back and add this complete buzz-killer of a line.)
April 20th, 2011
there was a movie where everyone in japan turned into robots, but I forgot what it was called.
April 20th, 2011
vexille ?
not robot though, but synthetic life
May 2nd, 2011
Before “All Your Base Are Belong To Us” became an internet meme, it was part of the intro text for Zero Wing, a video game from SEGA.