"I never think of the future. It comes soon enough." (Albert Einstein)

Judging by that quote, Albert Einstein would probably not have entered the Fostex R8 competition in last month's Sound On Sound — then again I suppose changing the face of modern physics and reaching for a grand unified field theory wouldn't leave much time for reading hi-tech music magazines. We asked you to describe a recording session in the year 2000, and the entries have made interesting reading.

A great many of you speculated about the possible impact of virtual reality on recording. While 10 years might be a wildly optimistic guess at how long it might be before we can record in virtual home studios, the thought of it is just too much fun too ignore. Your studio could look however you want (beach scene, Tibetan mountain top, Abbey Road, garage...), be equipped however you want, and come complete with whatever musicians you want. Let's see. Clem Burke on drums, Chris Stein on guitar, I'll play keyboards, and... alright Debbie, you can sing if you really want.

Of course, if this virtual reality stuff works properly, I can just ask Debbie and Chris to knock out another hit, in a familiar style, and they'll do it. I'll take it as read that any virtual music created in virtual reality can be mastered in the real world. I can see a few copyright problems here. When I release the record — sorry, disc, cube, tetrahedron or whatever — am I going to be sued by two ex-members of Blondie, or their virtual counterparts? I mean, anyone who can write a song and crack a joke in virtual reality must be 'real' enough to bring a law suit. If it's not too late for a career change, I think I'll become a lawyer — there's clearly a lot of money to be made here.

One of the other things that struck me about virtual reality was that it could put a lot of hardware manufacturers out of business. Why buy a JD800 when you could have a virtual one instead? Or would we all get nostalgic about 'real' reality. Keep Music Real, anyone?

Of course, all this misses a crucial point about the future — its habit of tapping you on the shoulder and saying "Ah, fooled you! It happened this way instead." Whilst many of things that we predict about the future turn out to be true, they tend to be irrelevant by the time they happen, overshadowed by other changes, or they happen in a very different way to that we anticipated. Our ideas of the future are conditioned by the present, and cannot take account of the real innovations that will come along.

As an example, sampling and MIDI have probably had more influence over music and recording in the last 10 years than anything else. However, before their development, one might have predicted that quite different products or trends would change the face of recording for ever. Many people recall seeing the first Fairlight CMI exhibited at a music fair, and hearing a lot of comments along the lines of: "Great. But what use is it?"

So, while virtual recording may be a thing of the distant future, and it is easy to make some limited predictions about medium-term trends (domestic digital multitrack tape, more tapeless recording, 'fuzzier' music software), the future will always spring surprises on us — which is probably why it is both fascinating and useless to speculate about.