-----Months into this new century and already the hoopla and hysteria are a distant memory. Life goes on, the world follows its wobbling spiral through space, the sun still shines somewhere above the pearly clouds, and things feel no different than they always have. It remains necessary to work for money in a milieu which inexorably grows more complex with each scheme to simplify it. The sky has opened no further than we have forced it with our smoky little machines. Dreams of rescue by other-worldly beings remain just dreams.
-----So something else is going to have to happen if there is to be a major change. Revolution has grow dusty and gray from two centuries of staggering around and not accomplishing much. Everyone just wants to be rich anyway. The current 'global economy' winks and hints at possibilities but capitalism has a nasty habit of blowing out as more and more of the wealth is bought on margin. Nuclear fusion? They are still trying to figure out how to patent it. Governments are basically just a bunch of toads trying to kiss frog's assholes, some of them dress a little differently but that doesn't mean much.

-----Oh, my children, the change must come from within.
-----What's that smell?
----- The change coming from within.

-----So we stumble on. Somewhere, in an air-conditioned and florescent brightened office, someone, or even a team, is crunching up the info and planning for our new centuries first really big war. Things probably won't turn out quite as they are planned. They never do in such situations. But basically, heads will be turned. What's left of the media will, doubtlessly call it, 'The First War of the Millennium'. Someone will be sure to make money. Who knows, it might even stave off a catastrophic stock market crash. Maybe Russia will win.
-----It's hackneyed to mention the person with a case of the sniffles who gets on an airplane in some rain-foresty place thick with bugs and the smell of burning trees and disembarks in a population center. Personally, I don't expect much from the sudden mutations of genetically altered food. After all it's only a new way of doing what we've been doing since the first day we planted a seed. And irradiating food will probably just slow down whatever the traveler on the plane had when the food processing workers catch it.
-----But it is so easy to prophesy doom. Folks have been doing it effectively for thousands of years. Often enough they are right even if a bit sketchy on the particulars. What is difficult is to foresee happiness... a coming age of beauty and joy where everyone is treated fairly and no one complains. In the interest of that I shall foretell the return of International Communism. No Stalins this time. Just dedicated bureaucrats effectively guaranteeing: "From each according to his ability, unto each according to their need."
-----And liking it... .