20 years later, did our predictions about the 2000s pan out?

At the close of the last century, futurists peered into the new millennium with both awe and dread.

The immediate panic was Y2K, the computer glitch everyone feared would result in an apocalyptic failure of electronics and communications around the world. But at midnight, Jan. 1, 2000, computer clocks turned. Nothing happened.

Y2K may have been a spectacular fizzle, but other things, unforeseen in 1999, would create shock and awe for real: the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, years of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the election of the first black president of the United States, the advent of electronic social media and the rise of “reality TV,” which spawned the first reality TV star president.

Twenty years ago, The Press Democrat talked to futurists for a commemorative publication, “Envision,” that peered ahead at the dawn of the new millennium and imagined how the world would change, both locally and globally.

A few of their prophesies missed the mark. Others struck remarkably close to reality. We look back at the new millennium we envisioned at the end of 1999 to see how close to the truth these professional oracles came to accurately predicting the future with forecasts based not on science fiction but on research, statistical analysis and conversations with scientists and inventors whose discoveries were then still in the lab.

Hit and Miss - ?Computer Glasses

Futurists in the 1990s predicted computer screens built into glasses, controlled by eye movement rather than a mouse. The technology, in voice-?activated and touchpad form, did come to pass, then quickly waned, at least as a product for general consumers.

Remember Google Glass? The smart lenses, at $1,500 a pair, created such a hostile reaction when they hit the streets in 2014 that early adopters were assaulted for wearing them. Privacy and intellectual property concerns led a raft of places from restaurants and movie theaters to strip clubs to ban the camera-equipped Internet-connected glasses. Google unveiled a new generation of the glasses earlier this year, but set in more conventional frames and targeted for business applications.

Hit - Spirituality

Futurist Gerald Celente of The Trends Research Institute predicted a major “millennial shift” toward spiritual values similar to the Renaissance thinking that followed the Middle Ages. That might have been a bit of an overstatement. But time has borne out that organized religion would be replaced by a less rigidly defined spirituality. Pew Research studies have shown a rise in the number of people who identify as spiritual and a decline in those who identify as religious.

Hit - Indoor mall

It seemed unthinkable at the time, but futurists, seeing the fast rise of e-commerce, sounded a death knell for the then-popular indoor mall. These icons of late 20th century shopping would be reinvented into indoor entertainment centers or, in some cases, abandoned altogether. The futurists called it right. Eight in 10 Americans shop online, compared to just 22% in 2000. Creepy videos and photo galleries of abandoned “ghost” malls have become an Internet thing. Retailers announced more than 8,600 store closings in 2019, resulting in an eight-year high in vacancy rates.

What futurists missed was the dystopian twist. One vacant mall in Alexandria, Virginia, has been turned into a homeless shelter. Malls across the nation have been re-purposed into senior housing, a community college and library, residential housing and offices.

Gerald Celente said malls would become “social venues,” centers for sports and recreation. The future is now. This fall, the American Dream mega mall opened in New Jersey, complete with a Nickleodeon Universe amusement park, a professional-size ice rink, an indoor water park and December snow park. Shops and restaurants are slated to follow next year.

Even the Santa Rosa Plaza is getting into the act in small way, with the Action Time Bungee Trampoline and the PLAYlive Nation social gaming lounge tucked among the shops.

Hit - Healthy food

At a time when McDonald’s ruled, we were told that people in the future would create a demand for healthy fast food. Futurists nailed it. Veggie and vegan-focused Amy’s Drive Thru in Rohnert Park has been drawing long lines of cars at all times of day since it opened in 2015. Other healthy fast-food chains and franchises are cropping up or growing, including Saladworks, Vitality Bowls and Chipotle Mexican Grill.

Hit - Edible landscaping

Celente was spot-on when he predicted in “Trends 2000” that lawns will make way for landscapes that integrate ornamentals with edible plants. It was a radical idea at the time, when growing food in the front yard was seen as a blight on the neighborhood, as if the Beverly Hillbillies had moved in. However, with recurring droughts in the years since the millennium arrived, the lawn, once a status symbol, began to look out of fashion next to modernist landscapes of perennials, natives, succulents and fruit trees. Ornamental and edible landscapes have become so socially accepted they can be found even in hig- profile public places, like Petaluma City Hall.

Hit - the Smart Box

Tom Frey of the DaVinci Institute, a futures study organization specializing in technology and invention, said in 1999 that the Smart Box, then viewed as a high-tech milk box, would be the “next major appliance” of our every household. Frey said this would be the “missing link” to finally allow e-commerce to take off by providing a secure and refrigerated place on the porch for fresh food and other deliveries.

He was right and wrong. Package piracy has become a huge problem, but products like the Box Lock with padlocks activated by barcodes are only now hitting the market at affordable prices. Refrigerated boxes for home food delivery exist but come at a high cost. Instead, food shippers have found ways to keep perishables cool in transit.

Hit and Miss - Cellphones

Futurists in 1999 only skimmed the surface of the possibilities of the personal digital assistant and how cellphones would completely transform the way we live.

“It may take two decades, but virtually every American is likely to have a personal communicator, with an assigned personal number and be wired for instant communication,” we presciently told readers back in 1999.

The idea was so amazing that we thought it worthy of note when a spokesman for Intel recounted how he had used his cellphone to call a doctor for advice on how to treat his daughter who was suffering from altitude sickness on a family backpacking trip. Such a story would be laughable now. What was a big wow in 1999 is a big whoop in 2019.

Miss - More computers

Futurists predicted that personal computers would be in 95% of all of American homes by 2010. Ten years beyond that, the website Statista reports that just 74% of all households have a laptop or desktop. That may be a result of the ubiquity of cellphones and how they have advanced into mini computers that can do virtually anything a PC can do.

Big Miss - ?Sharing economy

Futurists failed to see the coming of the sharing economy. The advent of Airbnb, LYFT and Uber, crowdfunding, city bikes and other grassroots income and service enterprises made possible by digital communications has been one of the most significant social and economic changes of the new century.