Bumping a necro thread, sorry not sorry.
A lot of people are talking about how Mike managed to get the formation of the European union right which is huge, but are arguing back and forth about the power of the Eurozone within 2020. I would like to second what a lot of people are saying, in that Germany is still a huge economic power. That being said, ten years ago the Euro was REALLY strong, stronger than the dollar for a while. Then there is also the key difference between the Eurozone in 2020 and the one we have today. The one in 2020 intentionally excluded Greece, Italy, and Spain. The debt those three countries have racked up are mostly responsible for the position the Euro is in today.
What he did get wrong was the merging with the dollar, which has yet to happen. That being said it still very much could happen if European nations move forward with the TTIP agreement. The agreement is intended to make the trade laws in other nations more closely match those of the United States to better facilitate trade. It is not far fetched for another followup bill years down the line to unify currency as a next step. All three of those agreements (TTIP, Eurobuck of 2020, theoretical Euro-dollar agreement) would be intended to stack things in the favor of the US, but could easily play into Europe's hands.
People have also failed to mention one of the biggest things that Mike got right, and that was the rise of Agro-corps. Monsanto and others are buying up huge swathes of farm lands, and those they can't buy they force into complex legal agreements that give a damn near monopoly on seed purchase. If you have traveled to Iowa or other traditionally agricultural states you will see the effects of it. The jobs that once existed for homestead farmers aren't there anymore. The young can leave, did. All that is left is the agro-corps taking all the work, and the aging local population with nowhere else to go. Granted, those who left just moved to the city; they never formed nomadic biker gangs.
A number of small details also became a reality, nothing major or prophetic but noticeable none the less. The one that comes to mind is the emergence of "oxygen bars". Places where people go and pay money to huff oxygen. It's supposed to give you a high or something, but it's a recent thing that Mike totally fucking called.
He predicted the end of the Cold War, the reunification of Germany, and the collapse of the Soviet Union (although he was a little off on what Russia would call itself after). He was even pretty close with the year.
There are a number of other accurate predictions that he may not have been responsible for personally, but that the Cyberpunk genre as a whole got right. First and foremost the rise of post-occupation Japan as a major technological and cultural powerhouse. Japan managed to so closely match the Cyberpunk version of Japan it's almost eerie. In fact a story comes to mind. After the success of Neuromancer, William Gibson took up travelling to Japan with some frequency (he had never been before writing the book). He was at a bar looking out of Tokyo when a a journalist spotted him. The journalist walked over to him as he was staring out the window and said in broken English, "See? Tokyo real Bladerunner town". So much of our terminology for digital technology did not exist prior to the creation of the Cyberpunk genre. At the time of writing those books probably made almost no sense, but now those words are common; they have meaning because people like Phillip K. Dick, William Gibson, and Mike Pondsmith gave them meaning. Cyberspace, the web, wireless cell service; all these things were created because of Cyberpunk. Not the other way around.
Naturally this begs the question, did Mike Pondsmith really predict any of these? Or did they happen because he wrote about them?
