Growing up in the 1970s I expected that by the year 2000 I'd be taking my holidays on the moon, driving to work in an atomic car, and having my shirts ironed by robots. These expectations were not fueled purely by science fiction, but by a deeper cultural belief that the world around us was about to be fundamentally transformed by science and technology in ways that would radically alter our experiences of work, health and leisure.
If these expectations sound naive, I can only answer that in the 1970s they were widely held and grounded not just in our awareness of emerging technologies, but also our understanding of how the world had aready changed rapidly across the 20th century, and how our childhood was very different to that of our grandparents.
But despite 30 odd years of progress and development, the world I envisaged as a child seems even further away than it did at the time. Yes, we have the internet, some amazing architecture, wonderous medical interventions, and countless other innovations. And I'm sure there will be much more to come. But my view is that all of this does not add up to the radical step-change that I expected to live through. Back in 1970 the American Futurist Alvin Toffler predicted that we'd all be living in a state of 'future shock' caused by too much change in too short a period of time, but I feel exactly the reverse of that; that the world has not changed nearly as much as I want it to and that the clock is ticking away. Even more troubling than the slackening pace of change, is the sense of a cultural shift away from futurism and towards a conservative fear of the new, that seems rife among politicians, media pundits, environmentalists and even many scientists.
The aim of this blog is to describe the future we were expecting, assess the extent to which it has arrived, and explore the social, economic, political and cultural factors that have stood in its way. Examples of lost futures will be welcome as will explanations of why we have been denied them. This may sound like a gloomy project, but the purpose is not so much to wallow in disappointment, but to re-spark the futurist imagination and contribute to a renewed appetite for change.
