Is 2012 is a game-changer in history, as were 1979 and 2001?

I was in graduate school--often sleeping in a corner of USC's philosophy library or Doheny library--as the the Soviet Bloc started coming apart.

It was surreal to watch the entire system come down.  Those were the prime years of CNN and its anchor, Bernard Shaw.  

As one who grew up reading Russian literature, which convinced my parents that I was a commie who would never go to the US, I was all the more fascinated with the events and Gorbachev became my hero for carefully walking down the path of perestroika and glasnost.

All of a sudden there they were: Latvia and Estonia and Lithuania.  Soon after all that there was Yeltsin holding on to a new Russian beginning.

The crazy thing for me as a student was that none of my faculty even remotely talked about such a possibility, say, in 1987 or even in 1988. 

As Yogi Berra remarked, "Prediction is very hard, especially about the future"

Years later, as the summer season of the university's calendar was winding down, it was early in the morning as I was drinking coffee with NPR in the background when I thought I heard something about a plane crashing into the World Trade Center in NY.  For two days after turning the television on at that moment, I sat transfixed and absolutely depressed by the even more surreal sights--I even skipped out on the back-to-school events on campus where, I later learnt, the university president had apparently highlighted, among other accomplishments, a research work that I had just completed.

I am amazed that I have already lived through such major game changers in world history!

In recent years the dramatic game changers in global history have been quite regular, about a decade apart:

1968: the Tet Offensive
1979: annus horribilis
1989: The Berlin Wall tumbles down
2001: 9/11

It is then tempting to worry that the next event is round the corner.  It is equally tempting to think that the Arab Spring was not a game-changer, but that the recent wave of protests is the beginning of a historic turning point.

But, I have learnt enough to humbly admit to this: I don't know when and where that will happen.

I don't think even Bruce Bueno de Mesquita knows
 :-(