alt Hacker NewsSolidly prophetic?
Er, it kind of predicts the internet, but everything else?
Quebec separatism? Corporate sponsored calendar? All of North America under the same flag? Dumping toxic waste in/on Québec instead of Africa ?
none of things actually happened
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>Er, it kind of predicts the internet,
The internet long precedes the publishing of Infinite Jest.
Don't forget the giant hamsters and wheelchair assassins.
Two of these things were already on the go. Or kind of...
The Québec independence movement has been mainstream for a long while and is fairly successful despite attempts to scupper it, such as installing completely bilingual prime ministers etc. Maybe one day it will reach its ultimate goal.
The "sponsored calendar" is probably Wallace's parody of various dedicated years, days and months we have. We do have World Mental Health Day, Black History Month, Gay Pride Month, the International Year of Whatever. We had a "Year of Gaelic" in Scotland which I only heard about half way in. The difference being that these are not generally purely advertising initiatives, although many corporations have tried to hijack them.
I'm not sure I agree.
A more solid prophecy would be InterLace and the teleputer (analogous to streaming and smartphones, respectively).
I do think the Entertainment is a solid prophecy of doom scroll / infinite scroll, which is now showing up in basically every application.
The videophony chapter is also especially prophetic when you consider the prevalence of things like filters. I actually noticed the other day on a Google Meet that there is a 'touch up my appearance' feature. Wild.
This one is a lark, but one funny thing, although very different from ONAN (Mexico + USA + Canada), is that we're kind of witnessing an 'ONAN' world cup (all the matches are in these exact three countries). Again, obviously different from ONAN in Infinite Jest, but I thought that was funny.
I'm not sure he predicted the internet, as you mentioned, as the internet was invented in the 60s. If you meant the world wide web, that was created in 1989, popularized in 1990. IJ came out in 1996, so my instinct is that DFW knew about the internet/www when he wrote the book.