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7 hours ago
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It's been more than 20 years since boy band Busted proclaimed visions of the future in their hit song 'Year 3000'.
The catchy pop-punk classic, which reached number two in the UK charts in January 2003, envisages the world just under 1,000 years from now.
According to the lyrics, people of AD 3000 live underwater, while triple-breasted women 'swim around totally naked'.
So, were Busted right with their predictions?
According to Simon Underdown, professor of biological anthropology at Oxford Brookes University, an underwater society 975 years from now is 'not entirely unfeasible'.
However, he doubts there's any evolutionary factor that would make women grow an additional breast.
'If global temperatures keep going up and sea levels rise humans might build structures that extend under the seas,' he told the Daily Mail.
'But I'm going to question Busted's scientific bona fides when it comes to predicting a multi-mammary future.'
Busted's song, which reached number two in the UK charts in January 2003, predicts the world in the year AD 3000. Pictured are the band in the music video
If global temperatures keep going up and sea levels rise humans might build structures that extend under the seas, say experts. Pictured, an AI depiction of what this could look like
Professor Underdown predicts 3000 will see 'technologically and biologically enhanced humans' implanted with 'bio-chips to open things' and eyes that let us 'use the internet in a hugely augmented way', a bit like in The Terminator films.
'Technological innovation is only getting faster and the impact it has on our lives is getting ever more profound,' he added.
Also in the song, Busted – made up of James Bourne, Charlie Simpson and Matt Willis – tell listeners that your 'great-great-great-granddaughter is pretty fine'.
SJ Beard, a philosopher and existential risk researcher at the University of Cambridge, points out that this is surprisingly few generations away.
The academic told the Daily Mail: 'If the guy's great great great grand-daughter is still alive in the year 3,000 then she is about 800 years old, so they must have invented some pretty good life extension.'
Professor Beard, who is author of 'Existential Hope', also speculates that three breasts could be possible if we're 'exposed to radiation or a gene-altering pathogen'.
'This would also explain why everyone lives underwater, to protect themselves from a hostile atmosphere and environment,' they added.
'However, underwater habitats are gruelling – everything needs to be recycled, there isn't much room, and the ocean is constantly threatening to breach your containment and force you out.'
When James Bourne, Charlie Simpson and Matt Willis burst onto the scenes as Busted they were a breath of fresh air and credited with changing the music scene (pictured in 2003)
The year 3000 according to Busted
'Year 3000' was a number 2 hit for Busted in 2003 that imagined what the year 3000 would be like.
As Busted explain through song, they travelled to the year 3,000 in a time machine equipped with a 'flux capacitor' - a nod to the fictional device from ‘Back to the Future’.
There, they encounter plenty of boy bands and 'triple breasted women' who 'swim around town totally naked'.
Amazingly, people now live underwater, but apart from that 'not much has changed', they say casually, although your 'great-great-great-granddaughter is pretty fine'.
Professor Beard also speculates there 'may not be any people in the year 3000 at all' in a scenario that echoes sci-fi classic 'The Matrix'.
'What might have happened is that people invented a super-intelligent AI and gave it some benevolent-sounding task like "make everyone happy",' they said.
'But the AI realised this was impossible and so decided that the best it could do was to create artificial humans to live happy lives in our place.'
Dr Thomas Robinson, senior lecturer at Bayes Business School in London, thinks AD 3000 could be similar to before the Industrial Revolution where the vast majority live 'far simpler lives in the wreckage of past societies'.
In a dystopian-sounding scenario, he envisages 'villages under a rusty toppled pilon' and 'horse paddocks by the remnants of the M5' when resources run out.
'The last 250 years with the Industrial Revolution and the harnessing of various kinds of carbon fuel are an exception rather than the norm,' Dr Robinson predicted.
'I think, over very long timespans, there will be a reversion to the mean.
'This does not mean that technologies will disappear, but our capacity to infinitely scale stuff up hits hard boundaries.'
In AD 300, 'not much has changed but they live underwater' and your 'great-great-great-granddaughter is pretty fine' - suggesting there's some seriously impressive life-extension capabilities by then
However, Nick Longrich, senior lecturer at the University of Bath, thinks the world will be 'richer, safer and more prosperous' and people will be 'nicer, more sociable' and 'less disagreeable'.
'In purely material terms, the world is increasingly wealthy, not withstanding tech billionaires,' he told the Daily Mail.
'Famine has become much rarer, most people have clean water, few people die of warfare, in a large number of countries life expectancy is 70-80 years.
'We enter this situation where increasingly the world will suffer problems of abundance and affluence, rather than scarcity, at least in purely material terms.
'Also, the evolution of humans saw us evolve to become more cooperative, more agreeable, and less aggressive, which might be why we beat the Neanderthals.
'That’s one sorta dystopia – we take a time machine to the future and it’s kind of nice, and pleasant, and boring.'
Overall, correctly predicting the future is 'a big ask', Dr Robinson said, especially considering the changes that happened in the last 1,000 years.
A millennium ago, England was part of an Empire ruled by Danish kings and most people were peasant farmers who lived in countryside villages.
1,000 years ago, England, along with Denmark and Norway, was part of the North Sea Empire ruled by Cnut the Great from 1016 until his death in 1035. Depicted, the Danes land at Tynemouth in England as people flee to the safety of a hastily built hill fort, 10th century AD
'One thousand years is an immense amount of time in human society,' Dr Robinson said.
‘What correct predictions could Cnut the Great from Denmark have made about our times? The answer is nil.'
According to Professor Beard, change over such a long time period 'isn't just possible and desirable' but 'inevitable'.
'To me, the most worrying part of the song is the line "not much has changed" – flourishing and resilient societies are always changing to innovate and adapt,' they said.
'When societies stagnate, it either means they have become dangerously fragile or else that something is forcing them to stay the same.
'The question is whether we can guide this change towards making our societies safer and better, or whether we let it drive us towards destruction.'
Fascinating images reveal past predictions for how life would look today with people walking on water and airplanes with pools
Sci-fi movies always give us a fictional and often exaggerated idea what the future or living in outer space might look like, including high-tech new inventions.
Now, retro pictures and drawings collated by Bored Panda show a 20th century view of what the future might look like, including their predictions for mobile phones and air travel.
They include an illustration from 1900 that predicted that by the year 2000, people would be using balloons to walk across lakes.
Other inventions that were far from accurate included floating trains and airplanes that looked more like a cruise ship with a swimming pool in a glass pod.
However, predictions for high-tech self-driving cars, and a rather retro version of video calling, which included talking into a horn-like speaker, bear some relation to the present reality.
