The future has always been a favourite setting for fantasy, but significant temporal milestones such as the end of a millennium attract special attention and become the focal points for fascinated speculation. Almost every day in Australia newspapers herald new fears and fantasies of the year 2000. Further, the word “millennial” has begun to be used as an adjective for describing the cyber culture of the late twentieth century, and as the end of the century looms closer and closer, we are being deluged with speculations on the new millennium as the bearer of destructive computer bugs, aberrant climate trends, natural disasters, nuclear war and the long-awaited second coming of Christ. The millennium is also associated with apocalyptic visions of the ending of the world. In the lead-up to the last millennium, such prophecies led fearful European believers to climb mountaintops in order to be as close as possible to God.
The dominant drive of recent speculation has been towards imagining a negative future. Many people today share the view that the rapid technological advancement characteristic of the late twentieth century is not a sign of “progress” but, rather, is a dehumanising and damaging force, and a symptom of the contradictions of a postmodernist world that is out of control (Heilbroner 70). The popular television series Millennium supports this bleak vision by portraying serial killers emerging worldwide on an unprecedented scale in the years leading up to the year 2000. On a global level, the end of the millennium is characterised by poverty, large-scale unemployment and widespread economic instability to the point that the millennium itself is implicated in these negative trends. A prime example is the “millennium bug,” which is blamed in advance for predicted global technological disorder, just as EI Nino has become the scapegoat for every climatic upheaval across the world. The millennial moment, like EI Nino, takes on a mysterious life of its own. Paradoxically, now that there is very little room left for mystery, with the millennial “crossing” almost upon us, there is more interest than ever in that transition, almost as though the millennial moment is believed to have a special power that is yet to be revealed.
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Arthur, Paul Longley. “Australia 2000: Visions of the Future.” In Start Trek and Endgame, ed. David Buchbinder, 23–31. Perth: Black Swan Press, 2002.
