But as the magazine drifts into the cultural arena it makes several more intriguing claims

But as the magazine drifts into the cultural arena it makes several more intriguing claims. It is time, for instance (the magazine insists) for a Muslim reformation. As revolutionary fervour in Iran, Afghanistan and Algeria slackens its pace, so a new possibility is emerging of a gentler and more enterprising association of Muslim peoples, stranded as they are among so many different nationalities.This would certainly be a hugely significant shift (it might even affect the oil price), though the entry optimistically fails to mention that the Protestant reformation was accompanied by a great deal of bloody warmongering in Christian Europe. But it chimes neatly with one of the magazine’s other forecasts, which is that the power of the nation state will slide, cracked open by independent institutions, popular sentiment and 21st-century communications .The Economist also predicts something like an imperial revival in the Spanish-speaking world (“Hip, Hip, Hispanidad”). Present estimates suggest that by the year 2050 there will be 100 million Hispanics in America, and that Spanish will be an important, if not the dominant, national language in the United States.

Spain has recovered fast from its Franco-imposed exile from world affairs, and is now – through the single currency – in one of Europe’s driving-seats. Its position of economic leadership in South America will make Madrid one of the key movers and shakers on the international stage.All of these visions seem rich and suggestive. What a prospect: an Asian- Spanish-Muslim world, with a few tawdry and worn-out industrial nations (the once-proud West) sprinkled around the North Atlantic, playing their lotteries and watching their dismal football teams. But we only have to glance at last year’s edition of the same book, The World in 1999, to see that prediction is a dangerous game. The magazine picked a few winners (Australia to make the World Cup finals in both cricket and rugby; the total eclipse) but its bankers slipped up badly.”In 1999 there will be a lot of bare bottoms,” it wrote, a reference not to some exciting new twist in the fashion industry but to Warren Buffet’s investment quip that when the tide goes out, you can see who’s been swimming naked “1999,” the magazine swore, “will be a thin year.

Economic growth will slow right down.”This gloomy prediction was written slap bang in the middle of the dramatic financial crises in Thailand, Korea, Malaysia and Russia, so a degree of pessimism was more than understandable. But the book sounds utterly convinced of the inevitability of something that did not, as it happens, occur. It doesn’t necessarily mean it is wrong (it may mean only that its timing is out by a month or two). But it does remind us that the future has a nasty habit of remaining for ever beyond our ken. After all, last year’s book was adamant that “Australia will vote to get rid of its monarch”; it even suggested, as part of its portrait of bubbly multiracial Britain, that Paul Ince would captain England again.The trouble with the future is that, even rationally imagined, it is a contest between competing prophecies The 1999 edition tried gamely to hedge its bets.

We were in, we were told, for “a thin year”, “a crunch year”, “a tough year”, “a crucial year”, “a rewarding year”, “a roller- coaster year”, “an anxious year”, “a vintage year” and (if you were unlucky enough to be Russian) a “bleak and miserable year”.That should have covered pretty much every angle. But one of the problems that bedevils all trendspotters, of course (especially in the Economist, which likes to be crisp, and is far too busy to waste any time on tentative thoughts) is that they have to say something. It wouldn’t quite do to forecast that it would be “another year”, “a typical year” or “a calendar year”. It wouldn’t even work to speculate that it might be a confusing, contradictory, muddled, routine or (what the heck) unpredictable year.Futurology has brazenness built into its design, and that indeed is part of the fun Not that we can afford to laugh too soon. It is not too late for one of last year’s central forecasts to come true. “Expect a major world recession to start towards the end of 1999,” said the oracle, “set off by the end of the Wall Street bubble.” Who could swear that this might not, even with only a few shopping days left before the start of the next millennium, still come true?Perhaps it would be enough if the small things turned out to be true.