I remember when the year 2000 seemed like a distant, futuristic, bizarre milestone that would see human beings colonizing the moon, taking weekend getaways to Mars, and driving flying cars.
Well, we’re not exactly flying around in our fuel-efficient hybrids, those colonies on the moon never quite materialized, and those weekend getaways are reserved for a fake astronaut powering his way through space in a Tesla.
Instead, when the year 2000 rolled around, we were told that our computers probably weren’t smart enough to understand that 2000 was not 1900. Once we sorted through that interesting situation, we had to get used to writing “00” on all of our checks, voters in Florida had a difficult time figuring out how to use paper ballots, and one of the most popular movies of the year starred a volleyball named Wilson.
I still held out hope that we’d at least have our flying cars by 2015, according to “Back to the Future Part II” theory. However, given my own personal observations of highway drivers in 2018, flying cars probably aren’t the best idea and should probably stay in our imaginations for the time being. (If stoplights and speed limits are still viewed as mere “suggestions,” we need a little more practice on the ground. And don’t get me started on the left-lane-slowing-to-a-crawl chronic offenders.)
Deep down, I think we were all secretly thinking that our future would look something like this…
So…what did you envision the “future” looking like when you were a kid? What surprised you the most that has happened? What would you like to see that hasn’t happened yet?