Broken Promises of the Future
 

It's well past the year 2000 and I still don't have my personal jet pack. My house isn't made of plastic, in fact it was made in 1927. No one has been to Mars. So far aliens have only visited crazy people, I can't read minds, I've never published (or even written for that matter) a novel, I work for a large corporation, and my computer won't give me the definitive answer to anything - but I can't even crash it by asking it to calculate Pi.

What are some of the things you expected as a kid to be experienceing right now in 2005?

I had always thought after seeing Pathfinder that we would have someone on Mars by now.

For me, it was all about kitchens and houses for that matter - that did all of the cooking and cleaning automatically - sort of a cross between Disneyland, The Jetsons and Sleeper.

I also thought each home would have a robot and that cars would fly. I mean, I can get going pretty fast in my car, but it doesn't fly!

I think the funniest thing for me as a child of the 60's living in 2005 is the growing fascination with ideas from my own childhood - and beyond. Shag (also my age) is capitalizing on this trend in a big way. Even Target is capturing the style of the 60's with clever designs. I'm not sure if comtemporary culture is trying to capture the hopes and dreams that were so stong during that time or what the MO is. But, I think it is fascinating that certain things, once dispised by all in 1975 are cool again. I suppose I now understand the comments made to me while running about in my 1940's attire.


Oh, and the word "Retro" used to mean specifically 40's and 50's. When did the 80's become retro? Maybe a new word is in order? Or, am I just being an old lady? ;)

LOL!

A couple years ago, some of the HS age kids I coach were talking and one said "that's so 90's". Ummm.....I graduated in the 80's. I felt really old.

We were supposed to have a utopian world on the move: clean, efficient, and totally synthetic...a la Tomorrowland '67.

Domed cities. Perfect weather. No pollution.

Better living through technology.

The moon was supposed to be a day trip by now.

I thought I would be well into my next life.:rolleyes:

I suppose I'd better start thinking about retirement crap, eh?

We were supposed to find a big black monolith on the moon. There was supposed to be a mission to Jupiter in which the onboard computer went awry. Then, there was supposed to be this gigantic space baby.

Psst - I think that was just forced perspective - I lawys presumed him to be - well - baby sized.

In the future, everything was supposed to be right-sized and this stupid idea of forced perspective would not exist.

There's a long story here that I'll tell some other time, but as a kid, I always thought the Star Child was huge, and he looked kind of pissed. I thought he was coming back to destroy the earth, and I found him the most terrifying image I had ever seen on a movie screen.

Since he's really pretty much symbolic, the question of whether or not he's baby-sized is pretty academic.