***UPDATE*** MORE EVIDENCE IN COMMENTS SECTION BELOW***
Earlier last week, as I was stuck on a cruise ship because of Hurricane Irma, I took advantage of the free Wi-Fi (Royal Caribbean was simply awesome with helping the stranded at sea) to watch the live Apple Event from the brand new Steve Jobs Theater.
As a life-long lover of all things Apple, the event gave me everything this fanboy could have wanted, including the fabled One More Thing. (Man, I miss you, Steve.) But more than that, it gave me the feeling again that we are in the future. Lots of emphasis on talking to your devices, just like sages of yesteryear had predicted.
I’m not talking about Nostradamus. His “predictions” were purposely vague so they could be twisted to fit any future occurrence. Psychic? Hardly. But history has, until now, overlooked a far greater seer than Nostradamus could ever have hoped to be.
Rick Springfield.
I hear you asking, “Wait, Rick Springfield? As in, Dr. Noah Drake from General Hospital, Rick Springfield?” Yes, that guy. (And also, Rick Springfield, the surfing private detective from the semi-successful syndicated TV show High Tide.)
Springfield’s music is a wonderful whisky, whose aging has allowed its precious distillations to mature into smokey wisdom.
In his 1983 semi-hit song, Human Touch, Springfield posited, “Everybody’s talking to computers, they’re all dancing to a drum machine.” Lo and behold, here we are 34 years later and this is precisely the situation in which the world finds itself. (IRONY ALERT: his song is full of drum machine.)
At the time, the state of the art in personal computing was the Commodore 64. Nobody was talking to their Commodore 64s. Does it really look like you could talk to something with graphics like this:
Ha ha. NO. So in his prophetic music video he was clearly envisioning events to come. Apple Events, even. The Macintosh would be announced a year after his song visited the charts.
You remember the original Macintosh. The first computer that you could talk to. Well, maybe not. But it was so futuristic that even people from the future thought you could.
May I direct your eyes to this scene from Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home?
The Enterprise crew travels back in time to Earth circa 1986 to save the planet from an alien attack. From whales. Or tantrum-throwing intergalactic whale watchers. Or something. Look, that’s not the important part. This is:
It’s Scotty, the ship’s Chief Engineer, attempting to talk to a Macintosh. Confirmation that in the future, the standard interface with Apple products would be through speech. But still, talking into the mouse? Heehee, double dumb-ass on you, Montgomery Scott.
So, well done, Mr. Springfield. Let the world begin poring through your melodious quatrains and sifting for further revelations of the world to come!
Would you believe Rick Springfield correctly predicted that Dean Cain would become television’s Superman? It’s true.
In Springfield’s 1974 song I’m Your Superman, the chorus says, “I’m your superman. Oh, yes I am.” Can you guess what character Dean Cain played for several episodes on Beverly Hills 90210? That’s right, a guy named Rick.
The song’s first verse says, “I may not be as fast as a shot from a gun.” And that’s exactly why Dean Cain was cut from the NFL’s Buffalo Bills. He sustained a knee injury that prevented him from running.
The real clincher is in the second verse: “I am not super strong, I have no super sight.” In 2011, Dean Cain supported Rick Perry in the then-governor of Texas’ failed Presidential bid. If Cain had super sight, or any vision at all, he would have known Perry’s candidacy was doomed to fail. Perry couldn’t even remember the name of the Department of Energy in a debate that year.
Rick Springfield, back in 1984, starred as musician James Roberts in the motion picture, Hard To Hold.
26 years later, an Australian professional rugby league footballer named James Roberts began his playing career. Roberts was fired several times for breach of contract or off-field behavior issues. He even left a team because his manager forged Roberts’ signature on a contract. Once, while drinking and acting aggressively toward bar staff, Roberts was choked unconscious by bar security. But before an ambulance could arrive, Roberts gained consciousness and left to resume drinking at another bar.
Yes, Rick Springfield correctly predicted that James Roberts would be… Hard To Hold.