What happened to the future?

[bogeyman]

I reckon Maths, Science, Engineering will be worthless in the future.

You'll do alright then.

[Doggy Styles]

I reckon Maths, Science, Engineering will be worthless in the future.

Who's going to design and make our bows and arrows when we restart from year zero?

[bogeyman]

Who's going to design and make our bows and arrows when we restart from year zero?

The Chinese.

[lightng]

What happened to CDs that play perfectly after being abused with a 4-ton truck and a pot of jam.

[DimPrawn]

You'll do alright then.

I'll use my people skills.

[Bagpuss]

I reckon Maths, Science, Engineering will be worthless in the future.

I'm so confident infact I'm going to short them on the stock market and make a killing.

Sounds like an idea for a reality TV show, I'll be your agent for 20%

[expat]

We tend to look at big fast means of transport that we don't have, and ignore what we do have:

The Internet. Those of us old enough to notice that half our memories come with the footnote "there was no internet in those days, of course", notice that.

Mobile phones: they fitted right into our lives so fast that we forget... see comment above re internet.

Loads of other stuff: remember those automatically-opening doors on Star Trek? When the original series was made, the bridge of the Enterprise was the only place you could see them.

Microwave ovens: yes you can buy crap ones. A decent one does work.

Medicine: despite all the efforts of both parties in Britain to strangle the NHS for want of funds (and good sense) while claiming that it is thriving under them, life is better and longer than it was. And as for the Third World: life expectancy in most poor countries has jumped from 13th Century levels to 20th Century levels in one generation.

Cars: we can all afford to buy them, and they work.

Travel and Communication: when I was young, if a relative moved to Australia, you'd never see them again, and probably never hear from them again either because a 20-minute phone call cost a week's pay.

TV: many channels, now in colour. All ready for the day when there's a lot of stuff worth watching.


OK, I'm beginning to depress myself. I'm trying to put a brave face on it, but it's a shadow of what it could be. Even if I throw in Velcro and ring-pull cans (the only things I remember from 1960s Tomorrows World that actually came to be).

[TimberWolf]

The future was supposed to be brilliant. It’s tulipe at the moment. Who ruined the future? How do we take it back and rebuild the dreams?

Have a big world war. A lot of these things could be done but are inefficient btw (i.e. expensive).

[TimberWolf]

Loads of other stuff: remember those automatically-opening doors on Star Trek? When the original series was made, the bridge of the Enterprise was the only place you could see them.

We still don't make the swish sound though.

[Mich the Tester]

OK, I'm beginning to depress myself. I'm trying to put a brave face on it, but it's a shadow of what it could be. Even if I throw in Velcro and ring-pull cans (the only things I remember from 1960s Tomorrows World that actually came to be).

That’s the point. We’ve got all the domestic stuff and we can go around being annoyed by our phones instead of having some peace and quiet to think of something really brilliant, and we’re stuck. We should be able to fly to Australia for lunch, hold the 2012 Olympics on Mars and buzz around from one low orbit office to another using personal jet packs. We should be able to say ‘bugger this traffic jam, time for VTOL mode and afterburner’.

But we can’t because somebody stole our ambition and put it in an Icelandic bank. I want it back.