In the Year 2043 : Trek Into Future Elicits a Prognostic Hodgepodge

In a cavernous hotel ballroom that could have been cast as some cosmic cafeteria for the Starship Enterprise, the visionaries gathered--these futurists, fatalists and free-thinkers--all to talk about Tomorrow.

Well, actually, the year 2043--precisely another 50 earthly revolutions around the sun--as in The Next Generation, space fans.

Before a breathless audience of science fiction aficionados, the 10-member panel--which included architects, authors, techno-wizards and Captain Kirk himself, actor William Shatner--on Tuesday delivered up dire predictions and crystal ball views into that endless black void known as The Future.

Some questions asked at the Universal Hilton Hotel’s “Tekwar Symposium,” based on Shatner’s best-selling book and glimpse into the future:

“Will our cities become nightmarish bastions of overcrowding, violence and pollution?”

“Will cable TV one day offer 2 zillion shopping channels and become a couch potato’s dream?”

“Can Bill Shatner ever live down his Saturday Night Live skit where he implored ‘Star Trek’ fans--known as Trekkies--to ‘Get a Life!’ ”?

The correct answer to all of the above: Who knows?

To be sure, these were no Klingons who gathered to expound on The Unknown. They were professional-type talking heads, men and women alike, in blue suits and silk scarves, with advanced degrees, bolo ties, Coke bottle-thick glasses and wallets fat from publisher’s advances.

They sat at a long table in front of an artist’s vision of Toronto 50 years hence--a vision of a blue-green sky under which sat skyscrapers and thermonuclear reactor-type blobs.

Out in the darkness of the mirrored ballroom, away from the spotlight, about 250 spectators sat at long tables with cotton cloths, candy jars and icy pitchers of water.

Even though they had herded in off the street free-of-charge, they were themselves treated with an air of esteemed scientists. But this isn’t the Silicon Valley. It was Universal City, as in Movie Land. Like some Grateful Dead concert, the zany crowd almost stole the show from the folks onstage.

On hand weren’t Dead Heads, but Trek Heads--this smattering of pony-tailed poindexters, cueball-headed men with briefcases, bespectacled dudes with sideburns extending down their necks, women wielding hairstyles like futuristic spaceships.

Susan Savage, a T-shirted woman who operates a professional psychic and nutritional counseling business from her Los Angeles home, said she didn’t need any crystal ball to see the future.

“It’s going to come down to chaos, drugs, mayhem, total anarchy--like ‘Escape From New York,’ ” she said. “No matter how much technology we can create, as long as the human spirit is riddled with drugs and alcohol, society is going to go downhill.

“Like lemmings, the weak will perish. Only the strong will survive. It’s going to be tough out there.”

Onstage, the experts were not yet ready to slit their wrists.

Some offered hope for the human spirit, others specified the wildly imagined techno-successes of the future. Still, others warned of population gridlock, media manipulation and a soulless society devoid of human contact.

They talked about sex. They fretted over future crime and punishment. And the runaway overpopulation of India and Africa.

All the while, one panelist kept at work on a stream-of-consciousness sketch pad, his scribbles projected onto a screen. Frantically drawing seemingly disjointed images like some contestant on a TV game show.

As they talked, the Trekkies and sci-fi freaks quietly went wild in their seats. Cameras whizzed. Tape recorders whirled. Pens slid across paper. Eyeballs popped. They scarfed up this stuff up like a 2 a.m. cheeseburger.

The experts described the power of the computer, how the thirst for new technologies will become a veritable religion, how workers will wear computer chips embedded in their clothes that will help them think through their jobs.

It will be a time, experts predict, when today’s microwave oven and similar technology will appear as outdated and ridiculous as the 1930s image of the RKO radio tower.

“By the year 2043,” said Paul Saffo, director of the Institute for the Future’s New Media Program, “we will be able to wear more computer power on our wrists than we presently have in all the combined computer systems on the earth today.”

But potential danger also lurks around the bend.

Panelists wondered whether tomorrow’s electronic meetings--during which residents can vote for anything from condominium boards to U. S. president, all from their computer screens--will be ripe for manipulation.

They worried that technology will enable the most splintered, fractionalized groups to rise up and take public command.

Observed Saffo: “We could end up like the Italian government with a new administration every six months, with almost as many parties as there are voters.”

Wearing a sports jacket with zigzag designs like snow on a late-night television screen, Shatner constantly steered the debate with jokes, asides and insightful questions.

“All these guys want to talk about is hard, cold technology,” said spectator Heston Huddleston, a science fiction and comedy writer. “Shatner is really the only one getting to the heart of the matter.”

Speaking of hearts, psychologist Maureen O’Hara said the next 50 years will bring a revolution of sexual roles that have already started with today’s gay and lesbian parents, transsexualism and cross-dressing.

Virtual reality--a space-age combination of cinema and computers that can create five-sense illusions to boggle both body and mind, will allow lesbian mothers to introduce their children to a father-figure that won’t really exist, simply by flipping a switch.

With virtual reality a living room fixture--tomorrow’s compact disc player--lonely men can go on imaginary dates without leaving their easy chairs, said O’Hara, a former president of the Assn. for Humanistic Psychology.

So then, what’s to become of the singles bar?

There might not be any. With virtual reality, with dream men and women appearing in your living room, O’Hara said, “the experience will certainly be as good as a bad date.”