Well, here we are, the end of yet another year.
There have been unbelievable events and things that you could have predicted.
Things that you could never have guessed and things that almost seem inevitable.
But what if I asked you to predict what would happen in 2018? What about 2025?
How about 2039?
No chance you’d say – it could be anything from flying cars to us living on Mars.
Well what did people 25ish years ago think 2015 could be like?
Do we have to consult now dusty almanacs about what the decade of the Spectrum and red braces made of next year?
Actually no, we can, in just over an hour and a half see what the 1980s thought of 2015.
How? Just stream Back to the Future 2 to your laptop or tablet – or if you’re really old-fashioned just pop the disc in your DVD player.
The film, which was released in 1989, predicted a high-tech future world full of quirky gadgets and giant leaps in science which made it recognisable but also distant.
In it hero Marty McFly (Michael J Fox) and Dr Emmett Brown (Christopher Lloyd) zip through time in the second instalment of the trilogy.
They return from saving Marty’s future son from disaster, only to discover their own time has been altered and not for the better.
Hill Valley, whose courthouse looks suspiciously like Huddersfield’s very own railway station, seems to be run by evil Biff Tannen – who has murdered Marty’s dad.
It turns out the secret of Biff’s financial success is a sports almanac which gives sports results meaning he can accrue a huge fortune.
Marty and the Doc have to get the almanac back and save the future – or the present – or something.
So what did the makers of the movie get right?
An easy one is big TVs.
In the McFly family home there are huge screens around the house. Sound familiar?
There’s also multiple channel television with hundreds of stations available – but it appears there’s nothing on.
The movie also accurately predicted the rise of video conferencing. In one scene Marty Jnr manages to join a fraud and get sacked all by video on his TV at home.
If you’ve ever used Skype to talk to friends and family in far-flung places then you’ll know just how easy it is to communicate by video.
The renaissance of 3D films is also featured – albeit in the form of Jaws 19.
The huge shark leaps out from the side of a building and confronts a terrified Marty.
These days we’re used to seeing movies advertised as being in 3D and having those strange sunglasses in the cinema.
In the late 1980s that wasn’t the case and 3D was dead.
iPads were also featured in the film. OK, maybe not iPads but certainly it appears tablet computers were in there.
In one scene a man is taking pictures with what appears to be a small tablet and in another a man is seeking signatures for a petition – it may not be an actual tablet but it is certainly an electronic device.
But as much as they got right, there are a few problems.
Flying cars have replaced the usual road-going version. Sadly, as I write, I was today stuck on the A1 at Newcastle due to roadworks.
That’s a big X in that box too.
Probably the most iconic Back to the Future invention is the hoverboard – or the hovering skateboard.
There has been all sorts of science that says this is a possibility but so far no-one has really delivered.
But it appears that rather being used as a technology for leisure, hover technology could be used to move large loads around warehouses and similar quickly and cheaply.
But I’m afraid it still goes down as an X.
However, for all the things the creators of the movie got right or nearly right or even just wrong, there is still one thing that they were massively wide of the mark on.
The continued rise of the fax.
The producers seem to have believed that everybody would have a personal facsimile machine which they would use for leisure as well as business.
When was the last time you met someone who used fax to communicate?
In some ways it’s charming that e-mail wasn’t even on the radar then.
But in another way it shows just how fast things can change.
So my prediction for 2015 is that whatever someone predicts won’t happen.
Work that one out.
