Gentle Reader: First, many thanks for your support during my Presidential Campaign. Remember, we're signing people up for the Exaggeronte2000 effort right now, so email today! And now to business.

This particular column was born in a rather fascinating way: during the presidential campaign, Vice President Gore and I discovered that we were both enamored of sailing. We thus agreed to take to the seas together after all the electoral madness was over. There we were last week gliding with the gentle Caribbean zephyrs on my yacht, the DaVinci (named after fellow great Leo) &3173; Al, Tipper, myself, and my lovely Dante ­ when Big Al suggested, out of the blue, that I write my next column about what life will be like in the year 2020. Stunned to hear a universe-class idea originating from outside my own cranium, I almost defenestrated myself from the upper deck where we were enjoying cocktails. I then agreed to run it by a few of my nearest and dearest cybercronies.

this project and it's commercialization, a homeless person, for example, will be able to apply for UnReal Estate, receive a small device that allows him to breach the dimensional firewall, and then "homestead" in what could almost be called his own "frequency" of physical space. Sounds impossible, my faithful bowling and beers aficionado? So would space travel have seemed to even the Wright Brothers. Estimated Ubiquity: 2008

Number Three:
Flexiplast

Anyone familiar with the Replicator from the Star Trek series will quickly grasp this particular post-millennial miracle. This show has been a high-tech harbinger before ­ think on the fact that the Starship Enterprise's "futuristic" communicators are now in use by even the most mundane denizens of the business world. With that in mind, back to Flexiplast: this infinitely malleable, affordable, non-perishable plastic-like substance ­ currently under development by the CIA in conjunction with a joint agreement with the Israeli Mossad ­ was originally intended to allow operatives to carry up to 10 pounds of seemingly harmless malleable plastic along what looks like some sort of small microwave. However, this plastic is far from innocent: place a small bit of it in the small machine, called the Form Chamber, and tap in to a special satellite information network, and this plastic takes the shape of whatever information comes down the pipe. In other words, this technology will rid the world's manufacturers of the need to build something FIRST, and then ship it to a customer. On the contrary, all people with this technology will have to do is have on hand the requisite amount of Flexiplast, and a connection to the appropriate manufacturer via satellite, and the object will appear in the chamber the ultimate in "just-in-time" delivery. Do I hear a few misanthropic luddites chortling out there? Well, as they say in the gangster movies, "Stick around, bub." Estimated Ubiquity: 2014

Number Four
Personal Cyborganizer

This bi-cerebral, extropianimated, teraflop, 128-bit personal organizer might be considered simply a lavish enhancement of pulp-based and digital organizers currently on the market, were it not for the fact that it exists in a series of microprocessors anchored to the corpus collosseum of your brain. Yes, that's right, I said "your brain." This shouldn't be too hard to grasp for all you middle-class surbubanites with contact lenses, artificial hearts, plates in your head, penile implants, and so on. You see, extropians have been with us for years ­ it's just that they've crept up on us one-by-one. Brain/body enhancers will be as mundane to the 2020 crowd as caffeine, braces, and surgery are to early adopters of today. But where are we today with such "miracles?" A joint project between Intel, Day Runner, and Mt. Sinai Hospital in Manhattan has produced a small device that, while nothing as elaborate as what I have just described, takes a few significant steps in the direction. Experiments have shown that, in simple memory tasks, a rudimentary "hard drive" implanted in the brain of a healthy human can increase retention of simple numbers and words by 83%. To put this in perspective, imagine the very first ape to use a stick as a weapon, Kubrick/Clarke-style, and then extrapolate forward to the tremendous destructive power of 1996's nuclear arsenals. "Science marches on," as they say. If the medical trials continue at this rate, enhancing brain implants will be one of the major developments of the early 21st century, and will (initially, anyway) transform the world into a two-tiered "have enhancements/have-not enhancements" society. But this disparity, which will be, of course, economically driven, will eventually even itself out, as is the case for virtually every useful technology in recorded history. And while I understand that this final development might be the hardest for your average Barney-worshipping, Coors quaffing, lawn fertilizing, missionary positioning, Hardy Boys deifying, non-voting, overeating, Bruce Willis-movie-seeing, I'll-believe-it-when-I-see-it Boobus Americanus (faux Latin gratis H.L. Mencken), I would hope that readers of MY column might be able to stretch their minds around a few concepts more difficult than, say "the 15% tax cut," or "how to keep eating like a wildebeest and lose 10 pounds a week." Estimated Ubiquity: 2020

Well friends, there you have it ­ a whirlwind tour of the future, brought to you for the mere cost of accessing Tweak (currently free, I understand? ­ travesty of the free market!). Adieu till next time, when I will be safely back in this decade, floating on my very tangible and prosaic plastic inflatable swimmingpool horse some few years off the coast of my beloved Patmos, Greece. Sweet dreams, one and all ­ I'll see you in the FUTURE!!! Ahh-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!

Next Issue: 'Ware Wars

Whom to ask, whom to ask? Silicon Valley thinktanker/Doom partner Paul Saffo thought the idea was boffo, and bade me proceed apace. High-tech VC Master of the Universe John Doerr said, aping the hep lingo of the film "Swingers," that "that idea is so MONEY that you don't even know it!" And he should know. And finally, I ran the ultimate cyberpublishing gauntlet, running the idea by Wired's head honcho, Louis Rosetto ­ a man as enigmatic as the very Rosetta Stone for which he was named. After some quick e-mailing, I met Louis at 330 Ritch Street in SOMA late one night, where he gave the project his cryptic, and yet somehow comprehensible, thumbs-up, with a well-practiced "Live Long and Prosper" handsignal that Spock himself could barely have matched. Boldly go, Louis ­ boldly go, my friend! Having received this okay, this yah gute, this "Make it so," if you will, I eagerly began to scribe. And thus, my little Canterbury Tale of idea-to-article process completed, let us on to the Main Event, namely:

Wonders of the Year 2020, as Prognosticated by MS-DOStradamus, aka Your Humble Scribe

[Note: For the skeptics among you, I suggest you save this list somewhere until the designated year of 2020: it will no doubt be one of the grand pleasures of that particular year to imagine you murmuring, "Sheeze, he wuz right, afta all."]

Number One:
The Grampanator

This multimodality, parallel-bifurcated frequency holographic transmitter allows you to talk to your deceased relatives (and, in some cases, close friends, but its main goal will be to communicate with close relatives whose blood relation enhances the magnetic connection) by channeling their lingering energy forces into a transceiver that brings their visible image onto a screen and creates a rough (though often comical, sadly) approximation of their voice. Note for any Western Science-only Left-Brain logical type doubting Thomases out there: I entreat you to make your skeptical way to the MIT's MEdia-Lab, where the early version of this in-development device has been registering things that make Everyman Hero Stephen King's quaint tales seem positively Bambiesque. Estimated Ubiquity: 2003

Number Two: Unreal Estate

This punning concept refers to the intra-dimensional work being done at Stanford, where research has shown the possibility/probability of the existence of an almost infinite amount of dimensions in addition to our little home base here in the "real world." Dr. Paul Esmos, leader of the 4-D Spatial Schism Project ­ funded by a MacArthur "Genius Grant" ­ estimates that he will have verifiable proof of other dimensions by the year 2000, and that by the early '00s his team will be able to place small particles of matter in a limited number of other dimensions. From there, it is only a short leap ­ or so Dr. Esmos says ­ till the day we are able to enter these dimensions ourselves. And there's the practical rub: with the dimensional firewall successfully and safely breached, practical commercial applications will follow, including the sale of "Unreal" estate, which will be eerily akin to "Virtual Realty" in that it is in some ways almost infinite, and extremely cheap as technology gets better. More to the point, by the end of