It's beginning to look a lot (un)like Christmas!

As Christmas is just around the corner, and the new year is upon us, it is natural for everyone to reflect upon the last 12 months as the year comes to a close: the good, the bad, and the ugly! For me, I can't help but wonder what the festive season will bring in the future. Say in 100, 1000, or 10,000 years time, what will we be buying one another as gifts to put under the (probably fake) Christmas tree in the Anthropocene? That's assuming we haven't deforested the entire face of the planet by then...

I stumbled across a hilarious-yet-truthful satirical post by Simon Inges and Liz Else in the New Scientist (2015), challenging readers to come up with gift ideas for the new geological epoch. The article lists some hard-hitting ideas, for example, perhaps you might buy Mum a year subscription to the 'Clean Water Company', or Dad some 'antique tinned fish' (Inges and Else 2015)? Or how about some brand new 'anti-surveillance make-up' for those awkward teenage years (Inges and Else 2015)?
And we mustn't forget the kids, none of this 'Frozen' merchandise or Lego, they'd much rather prefer a 'de-extinction kit' for all those once-loved endangered and soon-to-be-extinct species!

The kids can't believe Santa brought them a de-extinction kit for Tigers
and Elephants! (Source)

In this imagined (perhaps exaggerated) future, the 'natural world' has become a distant memory of the past, and all that remains is humanity's manufactured, artificial world. The authors of the article challenged readers to come up with their best gift ideas for this Anthropocene future, and I am still waiting to see the featured entries! Personally, I think a best-selling Christmas gift might be the 'De-polluting Clean-Air 3000', a filtering system for all the toxins and gases we can't breathe! Or maybe a 30x30cm 'Grow your own grass' patch, to remind us of the days before we urbanised every green inch of the planet. But wait, what about those essential stocking fillers: a radiation-protection gas mask for those commutes when you drive through areas of entombed nuclear waste? It sure sounds like an exciting Anthropocene Christmas! If you have more ideas, don't hesitate to post them in the comments below.

If you can't wait to see the smile of glee on Mum's face when she gets her subscription to the 'Clean Water Company', why not plan ahead a fun game to play with all the family this year? The game is called 'How to Win at the Future', created by Matheson Marcault. The CultureLab section of the New Scientist provides a great step-by-step guide of how to play this game, and, as the article says, 'Tweet like its 2099'! I won't go into the details of the game, so read the short article if you genuinely want to play, I know I will be taking this one home for Christmas! The aim of the game is to provide the funniest/most inappropriate/creative tweet in response to each scenario. The gist reminds me of 'Cards Against Humanity', but instead you use chocolate coins to represent 'likes', and the players must try to use a 'secret word' (e.g. #GameOn, or #YOLO) in their tweet which they write in response to a series of scenarios. You get more likes for the more secret words you can slip into your tweet-responses. After running through the list of scenarios (the article provides 10, but I'm sure you could make up your own), the player with the most likes wins!

One of the scenarios is quoted below:

"It’s 2155, Snow Cloud Epsilon has crashed into a space mirror, raising the prospect of the first Christmas without snow for 43 years. Is it beginning to look a lot less like Christmas?"

Now I know this given example is poking fun at geoengineering and total human fabrication of the planet, but what if the future seriously would somewhat resemble this? It would be terrifying! Another couple of favourites of mine are:

"It’s 2019. Now that he’s finally over 35, Justin Timberlake reveals his life’s ambition – to become US president. He plans to run on a global warming platform, but he has not yet chosen a running mate. Any ideas?"

And...

"It’s 2039, there’s a buzz over a new app that logs your dreams and matches you with people dreaming similar things. But you don’t even own a smarthat."

Well, here's to hoping for a smarthat for Christmas next year! Now, in all seriousness, this game could be a lot of fun if you're a bit of a sarcastic nerd like me, but there are some scary messages entwined in these ideas. Whether it be in future Christmas gifts, or in Christmas family-fun games, the state of our future is largely up to us. We can make the Anthropocene a good or a bad thing, depending on our actions in the next few decades. I only hope these joking scenarios (especially the one about space mirrors) never become reality, and that we can recognise change must happen in our behaviour and politics to prevent a frankly terrifying future epoch. As the saying goes, new year, new me, and new geological epoch with enormous societal, economic, cultural, and scientific consequences. (Yeah okay, I made that last bit up...).

Merry Christmas folks!