For the past few weeks, Warren Ellis' blog has been running predictions for 2004 from the various gonzo futurists, scifi writers, early adopters and scary goth camgirls he knows; Matt Jones' predictions are probably the most interesting of the series:
BrIC: 2004 is the year where the cultural and economic dominance by BrIC [Brazil, India, China] starts to emerge. More movies of the calibre of 'City of God' dominate the movie and soundtrack charts. Brazil's equivalent of the Neptunes dominate the global ringtone charts. Kids on the 8mile practice not rap, but capoeira battles.
CORMANRINGS: In 1977, Lucas unleashed Star Wars. There were a gazillion cheapo ripoffs on tv and screen including Roger Corman's awesomely bad-but-I-love-it "Battle beyond the stars": y'know the one with John-Boy Walton as the hero... The oscar-winning success of Peter Jackson's Tolkien trilogy coincides with the low-low price of pro-am digital video and film production to produce a bumper crop of copyright-skirting elvish nonsense of a similarly amusing/appalling ilk.

(Machinima meets Dungeons & Dragons, anyone?)

Update: There's more on BrIC in the news: a piece on the Brasilia Consensus replacing the Washington Consensus, and a piece on the G20 (which includes BrIC) and EU issuing a joint communique on global trade talks. (Though isn't the EU, economically speaking, an inherently neo-liberal construct?)

Posted by: kenny | http:// | Fri Jan 2 06:00:50 2004

re BRIC: http://www.plastic.com/article.html;sid=03/10/27/15593092 http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/EI27Df01.html

re the EU: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.08/view.html?pg=4 http://science.slashdot.org/science/03/11/28/1839242.shtml

Posted by: Anton the Ignorant | http://www.ogre.nu/ | Mon Jan 5 00:43:22 2004

Does the opening of internal borders outweigh the maze of price supports?

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