People will realize that we’ve screwed up the earth so they’ll start making positive changes, both globally and in their own lives. The future is about individuality and finding inner joy. There will be more love on the planet. In music, the future is about original creation and the end of sampling. Sorry Puff Daddy.
– Ryan G Hinds, musical theatre superstar of the future, Toronto
The usual: world peace, a good secure future for myself and for everyone, and for unrequited love to turn requited.
– Ken Spragg, president of GALA (Gay And Lesbian Alliance) and a student at St Thomas University, Fredericton, who will not disclose the object of said unrequited love
As lesbian and gay people, the 1990s have finally brought us a measure of legal protection – although in places like Ontario it is clearly second-class citizenship. But just ask racial minorities or women how much legal rights alone are worth. We must continue the fight for respect and dignity. This is something that no legislature can convey. It can only be achieved through the trickle-up effect from each of us, in our own little worlds.
– Alex Munter, Ottawa-Carleton Regional Councillor, Ottawa
There will be high tech bathhouses where there’s a digital picture on each cubicle door and a list of the person’s interests. We’ll be a lot more technology-based, which I see, in a twisted sort of way, as more human. Rather than being directed by media, we’ll direct media.
– Todd Klinck, author of Tacones, Toronto
Due to a Y2K computer glitch, Canada Customs loses all records on Little Sister’s being a gay and lesbian bookstore, and accidentally re-inputs them as a benevolent order of nuns who rescue infant panda bears and reintroduce them to the wild.
– Janine Fuller, Mother Superior, Little Sister’s, Vancouver
With digital photography, there will be a clean cut. Digital will be used for the media and fast work. Photography with chemicals and paper will finally be recognized as an art form.
– Raoul Jossett, fabulous photographer, Montreal
In the next century we will see the first trannie Miss America; advertisements everywhere, even in the sky; animals implanted with microchips that enable them to perform menial tasks; the end of gas and cash (but grass and ass will be forever, however); and mostly, people will watch old sci-fi like Gattaca and Blade Runner and laugh their heads off (although that isn’t much different from now).
– Paul Bellini, writer and performer, Toronto
Predictions on the future of filmmaking? More of the same. Technology will allow people to make work faster and prettier but it will not make that work any smarter or more sophisticated, where it counts. Bright new voices will emerge, as always, from the margins, and rarely from the mainstream. Films whose reputations last more than 15 minutes will be those that look back to the history of cinema, literature and visual art, and not forward to trends in new media and post-modern discourse. The ones that last will have a soul. As it ever was.
– Jeremy Podeswa, director of The Five Senses, which returns to theatres in January, Toronto
The future belongs to those who attract the best interior decorators for their “safe spaces.” That’s because the best interior decorators are restlessly creative and need to move on, challenging the inhabitants to see their safe space for what it ultimately becomes: a dogma pound. Innovate or re-decorate.
– Irshad Manji, TV host and producer of Q Files, City TV, Toronto
Dateline 00:00:69 PMS (Post Microsoft).
Nike.calcutta.us and Ikea Cigarettes mirror cyberstate, tiennamensmokes.beijing.us, have stepped up pressure on fellow corpsocracies at the United Netizens to enforce trade embargos against Cascadia.
On an emergency visit to Cascadia’s capital, Seattle, UN Secretary General Judge Judy netcasted commonsense with an attitude. “Get real. What do you expect when you elect a transvestite, flowers?” she spammed.
Cascadian President-Elect RuPaul counterspammed with, “We can overcome old fashioned notions of diversity through education and love energy, not by denying people their right to Ecstasy. Besides, the world needs Cascadia’s fish, wood, software and makeup tips.”
Meanwhile, activists at queer-based baud_e.electric.org/isingthe continue to defy the Africa Quarantine. As well, the rebel group’s Fashion Hackers have successfully deployed quickly mutating nanoviruses that disrupt digital clothing, in an ongoing mission to celebrate the physical body unhampered by binary surveillance.
Be sure to visit their chatroom and on-line store, this week featuring DeepEnds incontinence diapers for circuit party seniors, and spanking new from Dykautomy the world’s first U-haul with a built-in dungeon (paddle not included).
– Guy Babineau, author of Channel Surfing In The Sea Of Happiness and bon vivant, Vancouver
Every month there’s a new panic about a disease coming back – tuberculosis or a new flu that will wipe out 30 percent of the population. As the eternal hypochondriac and pessimist, I see health care getting worse. There will be no hospitals to go to in the middle of the night. We’ll be paying for everything.
– Derek McCormack, author of the Depression-era collection of stories, Wish Book
I’m predicting some fairly major technological disturbances around January 1, 2000. Despite some devastation, these disturbances ignite a mass world-wide movement of simple values based on loving fellow humans for who they are, treating the earth with respect, and living in peace and harmony.
– Kim Vance, president of Equality For Gays And Lesbians Everywhere,resident of the Dyke Road, Grand Desert, Nova Scotia
For gay and lesbian fashion, I see more decorative body art, rather than materials. Temporary body tattoos that you can put on or take off depending on where you’re going. And I don’t think the next generation of gay men will wear clothing that is so body conscious. There won’t be as much Lycra and tight tank-tops.
– Derick Chetty, freelance fashion stylist for the Toronto Star, Toronto
Are queers, like prostitutes, only legally okay as long as we don’t communicate what we do and who we are? Three cases coming up in Y2K will give us the answer to that: the Little Sister’s censorship case, Robin Sharpe’s kiddie porn law challenge, and the Surrey School Board book banning case. If we can win those, we will at last be as free to speak as we are to do. I’m looking forward to boasting about how much better life is for queers in Canada than for queers in the US without them being able to say, “Yeah, but you have censorship.”
– Anne Vespry, writer and maverick-about-town, Ottawa
May marriage between the same-sex couple be recognized by Canada and USA. I think it will happen in Canada within the next two years.
– Robert Yeh, who has been living with his partner Lew Lock Chong for 11 years, Edmonton
My next book is set in 2026, but it will be more like Expo 1967. Freaky buildings that look like golf balls. People more relaxed in narrow angular suits. I see the backdrops getting more razor sharp and weird. But I don’t see that people will be living differently. Nobody will want to work from a desert island with something attached to their head – they’ll still be going to an office.
– Hamish McDonald, author of Double Zero, Toronto
Increasingly, people have a superficial understanding of the struggles the community has faced. The biggest challenge to the archives – as the record of rights – is how to get that information out there. In the future, we plan to have a presence in the Church/Wellesley area, an exhibition space. We want to be seen as a cultural centre, as people’s home.
– Edward Tompkins, president of the Canadian Lesbian And Gay Archives, Toronto
Of course, the first thing everyone will notice is that snow has changed its colour. It will be the easiest change to see. There will be disagreements as to just what colour snow now is, because snow will actually be a different colour for everyone, depending on what colour it is each individual most needs to be surrounded by.
– Ivan Elizabeth Coyote, member of the Taste This collective, Vancouver
Deep, soulful house and garage will heavily resurface on the gay boy’s scene/club circuit, causing dancers to get more lost in the music than in their clothing, abs and selves. Crowds will become more mixed, diverse. Scores of dykes shall become sampler and software happy, adding beats and bass to the grrrls ‘n’ gee-tars sound. Check Le Tigre (Kathleen Hanna, Johanna Fateman and Sadie Benning) and their album for a spectacular sample. Les-bionic indeed.
– Denise Benson, who hosts Mental Chatter on CKLN 88.1FM, Toronto
Though the ethical and social controversy surrounding the search for the “gay gene” will continue to rage well into the 21st century, advances in genetic engineering and nanotechnology will bring a whole new meaning to the word “accessorize.” Appropriate appropriate technology, we say! Throw away the harness and get ready for implants. Your future lover comes with multiple attachments including rotating head, fists in queen- and king-size, and power drill for small jobs around the house; vibrating tongue implants and retractable nails (from femme to butch in seconds!). Gaydar becomes a reality with the development of a cranial microchip that allows us to locate fellow queers within a two kilometre radius. While a neo-puritan faction will reject these radical body modifications and enforce DNA scans and gender ID for women-only nights at the bar, others will go to the opposite extreme in search of the ideal lover and clone themselves.
– Anna Friz, radio station manager, perennial sex-positive dyke
on the town, Vancouver
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