Message In A Bottle from 1969

Packed with timeliness and storytelling tips

Hello friend,

How are you? I hope you’re doing well.

It’s hard to believe that with all the recent tech innovations—crypto, NFTs, Metaverse—now overshadowed by AI and perhaps soon quantum computing, it sure feels like we’re in a golden tech age with lots of promise yet mixed with concerns.

So last week, when I came across quite a thought-provoking “message in a bottle” from 1969 - it stopped me in my tracks.

Well, it was not an actual bottle but a song.

In one of my recent YouTube music searches, I came across the 1969 one-hit wonder "In the Year 2525" by Zager and Evans, two farm boys from Nebraska.

What caught my attention?

Timely themes

As you’ve noticed, it’s an apocalyptic song about humanity’s 10,000-year journey, showing how technology degrades human minds, relationships, and bodies, ending with man’s extinction.

Quite heavy, indeed.

You may have heard it, too, as over the years the song has been covered at least 60 times in seven languages.

I was familiar with the song by its folksy melody, but I never paid attention to its lyrics.

If it wasn’t for the narrator that provided brief commentary on each song that made it to 1969’s top hits, I would still never know.

A few memorable lines with timely relevance, some way before these distant milestones:

Misinformation

“In the year 3535
Ain't gonna need to tell the truth, tell no lie
Everything you think, do and say
Is in the pill you took today”

Over reliance on tech

“In the year 5555
Your arms hangin' limp at your sides
Your legs got nothin' to do
Some machine's doin' that for you”

I find these lines super timely to our AI age with a mix of concerns and hopes clashing doomers vs. revelers I covered in this story:

Embracing AI: Don't Forget Your Humanity!

But the strongest line, in my opinion, is the pessimist climate change prediction:

“In the year 9595
I'm kinda wonderin' if man is gonna be alive
He's taken everything this old earth can give
And he ain't put back nothing”

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