2104: How to Elect an American President
Only corporations get to vote. The number of votes they have depends on their total number of employees. The rationale is that since corporations are going to sway elections anyway, you might as well give them a basis for fair and equal influence without unseemly amounts of money changing hands. No dubious campaign donations to muck up the evening news and put people off politicians.
Work becomes a much more homogeneous place, and the sense of community squeezed out of the world by capitalist forces returns in the form of love and loyalty for ones co-workers, all of whom tend to have pretty much the same ideological viewpoint as you. CEOs are really hungry for this kind of power once it is proposed, and they control large corporate security forces that have largely taken the place of the local police.
The majority of those people who don't work for any corporation are either freaks who choose not to, most of whom are going to feel alienated no matter what you do to them, or geeks who are far too wrapped up in their own personal obsession to care about politics. Better not to bother them unduly with all that 20th-century style campaign advertising. Besides, if the principle of one-man one-vote matters that much to you, you'll be working for one of those ecologically-sound, touchy-feely corporations that gives out its votes to employees and allows them a conscience. If you work someplace else, and it means that much to you, go ahead. Go on strike. Your job will be outsourced and you'll get half-pay, then you'll return and people will make jokes about you behind your cubicle. It's not the government's concern.
2359: One minute to Midnight
The final flowering of eschatalogical "last days" Christianity. After this, few believers are prepared to pinpoint the final coming of Christ with any accuracy, and the faith settles down forever into a calmer, more rational view of world history. The gospel of St. John the Divine fades into obscurity.
2035: The Year The Music Died
Napster-style technology, alongside a natural saturation point in pop song writing, has effectively eliminated human musicians from the public consciousness. All music stars are DJs. Most commercially available music is a commodity created by complex proprietary computer programs (selling the software makes money for music companies, not selling the tracks). Aging baby boomers bemoan the loss of songwriting. Generations raised on endless trance tracks can't tell the difference.
