It was NineteenEightyFour twenty years ago. This page is inspired by the statement:
WithinTwentyYears, life on Earth will be extinct.
I would only tone it down to say civilization as we knew it for past hundreds of years, would be gone. But I am also optimistic that the ButterflyEffect, caused by people wishing for a different course society would take, could change things for the better.
In NineteenEightyFour, the IBM PC was the NextBigThing. Now I am on the verge of endorsing SocietyWithoutMediaIsBetter?. ExploringTheInternet has shaped more young minds than even the tube (television).
1984 was also the heyday of the Ronald Reagan Greed Is Good era? The 1987 movie Wall Street helped to convert the few who did not know about this new gospel.
Not that this last is relevant. Greed / anti-greed is as old as the business cycle. Witness the laissez-faire 1920s that precipitated the Great Depression.