Tomorrow never lies...

Why has man been so keen to find out what the future holds for him? An analysis...

There are some things in life so predictable that one doesn’t need to be clairvoyant to make a prophecy. For instance, Facebook will have its billionth user soon. (Ignore the bit about 83 million fake users.) Or, Apple’s next product – named iPin – will mark the end of banks. But man’s undying curiosity about tomorrow has always resulted in prophets and profits.

It all began when early man tried to use animals to see the future. From the dove that helped Noah during the great deluge to the pigeon that helped Salman Khan in Maine Pyaar Kiya, there have been enough precedents of oracular animals. Paul the Octopus had set the stage, and soon the rest - Citta the Elephant, Funtik the Pig, Lazdeika the Crab, Leon the Porcupine, Maggie the Monkey, Mani the Parakeet, Pino the Chimpanzee, Rocky the Raccoon, Traudl the Goat, Xaver the Bulldog and Yvonne the Cow - followed. 12 animals, each of them making their own predictions – and that was how the world got its first zodiac.

The future continued to hustle us. The zodiac man had used a dozen animals, but the Mayans would go one up. They created 13 mysterious skulls made of piezoelectric quartz crystal, which is a good conductor of energy. Each skull was a storehouse of information about everything in the universe, including our future. Legend has it that when it’s time for the end of the world, the 13 skulls, when brought together, will help save mankind.

Quartz crystal, the fundamental element in today’s computers. Skulls that could hold and transmit energy. Their coming together to form a network. Piezoelectric quartz, a key component of modern transmission devices like the radar. The larger picture slowly emerged. So that was why the Mayans didn’t have the time to extend their calendar beyond 2012 – they had been busy creating the world’s first Wide Area Network. Was it possible that they had already predicted their end and had tried to communicate it through their indigenous computer network and radar devices? Was that what Indiana Jones had tried to find out before Harrison Ford was retired for the next instalment in the series?

There are other links between modern technology and ancient forecasting techniques. One of the oldest known Indian forecasting techniques is the nadi astrology. Nadi in Tamil means ‘to search for’ – it was this concept that led to the creation of the search engine. Since ancient India had perfected the art of counting up to 1 followed by 153 zeroes, taking a cue from this, two young men, Sergey Brin and Larry Page began a search for a financial windfall of 1 followed by a 100 zeroes – and googol, or Google came into being.

While stargazing indicated the future, the stars themselves were found gazing into tea cups. Kate Moss was believed to be into tea reading until her publicist clarified that people were mistaken. Being a leading fashion model, she rarely ate or drank anything and was often found staring into her tea cup. 

A different kind of reading – of Nostradamus’ almanacs - would reveal that the end of the world was scheduled only for 3797. Besides, like the Y2k issue, the Y10k problem had already been identified. So life couldn’t end in 2012 – there were bigger problems to be faced.

But the condition of the internet, its trillions of websites, the rapidly exhausting Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4) addresses and the new social networking sites were clearly predicted by Sir Walter Scott in 1808 when he said, "O what a tangled web we weave..."