Next 25 years will be stranger than fiction (for communicators).

* The Angel Giacometti, flying in a dense, predawn fog, will get stuck in the World-Wide Web somewhere over Brazil on Jan. 31, 1996 - coincidentally, the 25th anniversary of the reconnection of telephone service between East and West Berlin.

By desperately flapping its wings 303,666 times in a futile attempt to free itself from the sticky Web, the angel will unwittingly cause the merger of one of the world's largest accounting firms with a new poultry company - a company that has developed a strain of giant, tasty, but man-eating chickens. The merger will create continuous employment for endless numbers of communicators whose job will be to win buy-in for the notion that you had better count your chickens before they hatch.

* Results of a major study on four out of five spin doctors will be released on Feb. 7, 1996 - coincidentally, the 25th anniversary of the U.S. Army's decision to, in the name of misdirection, change its bayonet drill slogan of "Kill! Kill!" to "Yah! Yah!" The spin-doctor study will show that telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth shall, in some cases, set them free from employment.

* Workers from a small traveling circus will capture fear on Sept. 19, 1996 - coincidentally, the 25th anniversary of women winning the right to vote in federal elections in Switzerland.

The workers will put fear in a cage in a sideshow tent, where anybody with 12 coupons can face it head on. With the absence of fear in the work place, executives and any remaining middle managers will no longer hesitate to take the advice of qualified communicators, and all kinds of wonderful and previously frightening stuff will get done.

These are just three of the remarkable predictions from a major, forward-looking survey of IABC members around the world. The survey was sent to every IABC member, and the response rate was .9999166%. If you did not receive it, you are the only member who did not, and you should check with your mailroom immediately. The survey was conducted in late winter and early spring of 1995 by If You Buy The Numbers, I Can Make My House Payment, a wholly owned subsidiary of Trust Me Communications, Inc.

Results will be used during the next 25 years to help members avoid "conflusion," a New rage word that refers to confused conclusions - often perpetuated by skeptic tanks, which we have come to know as loosely affiliated groups of people, usually cursed with the need to protect turf, who look at new ideas determined to shoot them down.

"This survey will help formulate points of convergence on any corporation's fiduciary intents and will help said corporations endeavor diligently to provide succor in their respective attempts to consummate objectives in every category," said Giovanni Woolgatherer, chief executive officer of Buy the Numbers. "It will aid in formulating points of convergence on the veritable eminence consequential communication can bring to diligent corporations, which will no longer contribute to bewilderment or perplexity by the purposeless continuation of mechanical, customary and predictable assignments that are not materially important."

"We endeavor vigorously to eschew obfuscation," added Beth Bacardi, chief spokesperson for Buy the Numbers, insightfully.

The survey company's presstitutes are hard at work trying to get some ink in the world's major newspapers. You also can expect to see additional results popping up online - from a variety of agents using clever pseudonyms.

Although the survey is far too exhausted/exhaustive to be presented in its entirety in this space, here are a few of the more pertinent highlights with implications for communicators and other professionals:

* By 1997, theorists will confirm the notion that video is more effective than the written word at persuading audiences to act; nevertheless, a strong backlash against multi-input combined with the growing sophistication and cost of video and its successors will maintain a strong market for the written word.

* By 1998, if not sooner, "change" will become a buzz'rd - circling noisily around our ears waiting for the meaning to die. The pace of change will occur so rapidly, in fact, that the entire concept will soon disappear.

* By 1999, computervision users will have the virtual ability, if they choose to use it, to discover everything about everything.

* By 2000, a critical mass of computervision users, in an attempt to fight a newly recognized physiological disease caused by information overload, will customize their daily viewing preferences. Many will install editing programs that remove advertising, creating temporary chaos for advertisers.

* By 2001, computervision programs, sponsored by corporations and special-interest groups, will become equal mixtures of entertainment, sales promotion, and advocacy, destroying the effectiveness of editing programs that recognize advertising.

* By 2002, some entry-level communicators will have to leave their computervision monitors - and hide their finger-pad computers - for a few hours each day to talk directly with information have-nots, who will continue to vote with their pocketbooks.

* By 2003, software engineers will develop an effective, if pedestrian, prototype program that automatically does everything a professional communicator can do, except drink coffee. But the program malfunctions during field tests when asked to deal with two conflicting concepts at the same time.

* By 2004, most corporations, to take advantage of the global clock and to meet the customized demands of consumers, will operate 24 hours a day; most retail operations will already be open all hours.

* By 2006, an increasingly mobile society, combined with global computer-vision, will create, at the business level, a truly integrated society.

* By 2008, because of the shrinking professional work force, the work week will formally be redefined as seven days.

* By 2009, 90 percent of communicators and other professionals will be forced to work on project-specific contracts as corporations' needs constantly shift, meaning that 90 percent of the profession will, in reality, be self-employed.

* By 2010, Earth will have only one true border - the one between information haves and have-nots - as corporations replace crumbling national governments.

* By 2011, nonprofit corporations will compete with one another for grants from corporations to provide basic infrastructure services formally provided by national governments.

* By 2015, information have-nots, unable to find jobs that haven't been taken over by robots, will be relegated to a few urban neighborhoods in crumbling inner cities, depending on services provided by nonprofits.

* By 2016, every person on Earth will be required, by age 14, to register as an individual special-interest group, on the theory that no two people can have the same common interests, This registration, which merely formalizes widespread practice, also will require registrants to list potential intent-of-affiliation agreements with other special-interest groups who might, from time to time, create strategic alliances.

* By 2017, in another case of reality mirroring science fiction, communicators' career development will consist of a series of ongoing defensive moves to counter, like Max Headroom, low reader/viewer rating numbers that flash constantly in the lower right-hand corner of our computer screens as we sit and type.

* By 2019, since data and information will be equally available to every corporation, virtual borders between corporations will shift daily, based primarily on the creative output of a handful - or fewer - of mind artists in each corporation. This creative currency - the ability to turn cusstomers into customers - will provide the rapidly pulsating edge between competitors, and will be watched as closely as today's stock markets.

* By 2020 - 25 years from today - the greatest challenge senior communicators will face at work will be doing more and more with fewer and fewer resources, until we are doing everything with nothing. The second greatest challenge still will be winning acceptance and understanding of the communication function.

A full copy of the survey results is available for U.S. $1,000 by calling: 01 800-IF-U-BLV-THIS ...

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Tom Geddie, ABC, is a communication consultant based in Dallas, Texas, and publishes the newsletter, Syzygy, for senior-level communicators.