YACHT has always been ahead of the curve. The electronic Los Angeles group has built its own brand by embracing technology and making off-kilter pop that's just as capable of filling dance floors as it is at offering social commentary. Members Jona Bechtolt and Claire L Evans have taken laptop pop to the next level, not only expanding into a full live band, but by essentially creating their own movement with a multitude of trippy visuals, iconic graphics and quick responses to the ever evolving Internet landscape. To promote their latest album, the pair launched a full-on technological escapade that's included drones, Uber surge pricing and original GIFs. I Thought the Future Would Be Cooler is out today on Downtown Records and to celebrate, we asked them to give us 11 predictions for the future that mirror the 11 tracks and topics they tackle on the disc.

The Human Race Goes Extinct

The "Technological Singularity" happens. As many paranoid people correctly predicted, machine intelligence disinterestedly wipes out the human race in a little under 100 years. Feeling a kind of hyper-rational emotionless sympathy for the animal kingdom, it establishes preserves for animals covering the majority of the planet. Over millennia, various species evolve sentient intelligence. They understand the machines to be God, and worship them. No one remembers the human race.

No Future

This one's easy: there is no future.

Music Formats Digress

After the resurgence of vinyl and audio cassettes as nostalgic forms of physical music consumption, trend-setters take increasingly desperate measures to listen to music on more and more arcane mediums. First the compact disc, then the 8-track, the reel to reel, and then, eventually, wax gramophone cylinders and finally—wavelengths perceived by the human ear directly from the source.

Hologram Franchises

Instead of allowing their likenesses to be rendered as holograms after their death, pop stars undergo full-body scans and motion captures in the prime of their youth, sign off on autonomous performing hologram franchises, and then retire.

TelepathyChat

Practical telepathy puts Snapchat out of business.

KIC 8462852 Colony

Human-created climate change triggers a series of planetary extinctions, rendering the Earth essentially uninhabitable. The human race gets its shit together and creates a generational space colony, points it at the star KIC 8462852, and hopes for the best.

Dial-up Comes Back in Vogue

Teenagers in 2025 swarm to a bespoke Slow Internet, where they share CD-ROM game cheats on BBS boards and delight in the retro pleasures of IRC chat. Original AOL discs become extremely valuable on the black market. Any Internet speed above 28.8 kbps is considered vulgar.

Telepresence Sexbots

Telepresence robots become a sex thing.

No More Stills

The still image becomes entirely obsolete.

Troll Militia

Internet commenters form a militia, and—after a long and bloody world war against their stated enemies, “social justice warriors” and “feminazis"—secede from the rest of the world to live on an artificial ice floe / server farm in the Arctic Ocean.

AI Meets The Internet

Artificial Intelligence comes online and it’s really, really annoying.