Need to look ahead, not back in time

One of the SOPs in end-of-the-year issues is a look-back into the year that is about to pass. The biggest advantage of this exercise is that with all such things having already happened, such an annual photo album will be strictly factual, without any room for mistake. The other plus point is that humans are fond of happy memories. So, recollecting these do warm the proverbial cockles of the heart. Which makes us come to the downsides. To be factual, one may wish to include the big unhappy events in the last 365-odd days’ roster too. Do humans, especially in a season marked as ‘festive’, really wish to be reminded of unfortunate events or tragedies of the last one year? There are other times and seasons for such ‘honesty’. The other reason for remembrances of the year past being a bit tiresome is because of the ‘recentability’ factor – more recent events, say, in the last four months will remain fresh (read: boring) to the onlooker than older events forgotten, if not in the mists of time, then in its smog.

So, the ‘solution’? The trick could be rendering images of events that are yet to happen in the next 12 months by using AI and smart human prompters/command-ers. This will be a change from the ‘looking back’ ritual. But if the ‘predictions’ are wrong? No matter, since no one will remember them if and when these events do not happen.