December 31, 1999
Web posted at: 12:22 p.m. EST (1722 GMT)

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(CNN) -- The world has seen all sorts of people scribbling down, with fist-pounding certainty, what was going to happen in the year 2000. Millennium gazing was an industry for, well, nearly a millennium, with philosophers, scientists, and prophets foreseeing everything from a "Thunderdome' scenario to a nation of people zooming around with personal jetpacks strapped to foil jumpsuits.

One side -- the utopians -- consisted of shiny, happy prophets predicting a technologically-enhanced 1950s-movie-of-a-future. Then there's the other type -- the post-nuclear doomsayers. These dystopians figured we'd all end up as mutant scabs scurrying around in shreddy clothes.

One ancient and trippy sooth was Nostradamus -- a dystopian's dystopian. With his pointy hat and pointier beard, it's tempting to wave him off as just another Merlin poseur, but many say he's actually been dead-on quite a few times. Way back in the 1500s, he is said to have predicted Hitler's rise, the French Revolution and Napoleon's conquests, not to mention a lot of papal elections.

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Drowning in the sea

Edgar Cayce was a prophet whose tea leaves spelled watery doom for spaceship Earth. In the early 1900s, Cayce's gig went something like this: stretch out, close eyes, make wild predictions while someone else writes them down, get famous. Sounds a bit fishy, if not plain lazy, but he was convincing enough.

From Cayce's trances came cures for disease, dream interpretations, a lot of reincarnation hooey and, oh yeah, something about continents caving into the ocean in 1998. Apparently, California and New York should be drowning by now, though Cayce said he wouldn't be surprised if it took until 2001 or so. Hedged his bets a bit; Mrs. Cayce didn't raise no fool.

Timothy Leary could be considered a utopian, if you dig his sort of thing. In an essay on the future of science, Leary predicted that scientists (or, if you'll pardon his techspeak, the "Smart Ones") will be the heroes of the next millennium. He rouses them to action, urging S.O.'s to "descend from their suburban split-levels and accept the decision-making authority." This is an exciting concept and as you read, you start to think that maybe in the future, power will not come from politicking or money or manipulating the masses. Maybe sheer intelligence will finally triumph! Oppression, gone. Racism, eradicated!

But then he starts talking about "spaceship Earth" and harmonizing with bacteria and basically loses all credibility.

The future of 'unwisdom'

ALSO For more ITN millennium coverage, visit ITN on line.

Epoch A, which is essentially our past and present, is all about humans figuring out how to live longer. Reduction of disease, prevention of premature death, how not to drink gasoline, things like that. We've spent the first Epoch learning about how not to die. But Salk figures this longevity kick will plateau out eventually and we will soon enter Epoch B, where we figure out what to do with all this extra life. The "Highlander" phase, if you will. Salk predicts that only those with well-developed and resourceful minds will survive what might otherwise be the lifetime equivalent of too much vacation.

Though he's written a bleak and hilarious collection of futuristic short stories called "CivilWarLand In Bad Decline," author George Saunders doesn't consider himself a futurist. He simply sets his stories in a "parallel America, where everything is, say, 20 percent 'more' than it is now."

Saunders, one of the few dystopians available for comment (he's not dead), continues, "I don't think much new ever happens. Most of us spend our days the same way people spent their days in the year 1000: walking around smiling, trying to earn enough to eat, while neurotically doing these little self-proofs in our head about how much better we are than these other slobs, while simultaneously, in another part of our brain, secretly feeling woefully inadequate to these smarter, more beautiful people."

Finally, we have the good old Good Book, which some considered about as dystopic and dreary as it comes. (Excluding George Orwell's cheery quote, "If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face -- for ever." Thanks.)

The Bible is filled with judgmental images of the future. Horseman of the apocalypse, seas running red with blood, bugs and toads all over the place and then here comes God, listing off all the bad stuff you ever did, right in front of everyone. Who wants a litany of every single paper clip you every stole, every impure thought, every time you wished your stinky little brother dead?

So the predictions were made, the muses spoke. But were they right? Is our new millennium the vision they foresaw?

It depends on whether you see the glass half full or half empty. By Timothy Leary's account, maybe Bill Gates is the one to lead us as a hero of the next millennium. And Jonas Salk's Epoch A sounds quite familiar in the reports about deciphering the human genome and identification of genetic basis to disease and ailments. But how long until Epoch B?

Maybe that will arrive while we're all waiting for our individual jetpack, strapped to our foil jumpsuit.