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Wrote smartphones before owning one
Ahead of the Phones
A Visit from the Goon Squad came out in 2010, and Jennifer Egan wrote it around 2005 to 2008, when the iPhone was brand new. The book shows people using handsets the way people use smartphones now. She didn't own a smartphone until 2011.
Satire Becomes Description
She meant it as satire, which is very difficult to pull off. Read in 2010, it was clearly satire. Read in 2026, it looks like plain description. Even the water wall in the book came before Hurricane Sandy, and one is being built now.
A Small Leap
Writing something takes much less time than inventing it and bringing a product to market, which puts a novelist a couple of years ahead without putting her far ahead. She went into the future only to follow a character whose age was already established into a later part of life. She briefly considered moving the whole timeline back ten years, then realized she would lose punk rock and land nearly at Elvis.
How did the iPhone take over so fast?
Steve Jobs unveiled the iPhone in January 2007, and it went on sale that June. Apple opened the App Store in July 2008 with about 500 apps, which turned the phone into a platform other developers could build on. Gartner reported that in the second quarter of 2013, smartphones outsold basic feature phones worldwide for the first time.
Why did Sandy flood so much of Manhattan?
Hurricane Sandy reached New York in late October 2012 close to high tide during a full moon, when tides run highest. The storm surge at the Battery in Lower Manhattan peaked at nearly 14 feet above normal low tide, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The surge poured into subway tunnels and low-lying streets in Lower Manhattan. Several tunnels stayed closed for days or longer.
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