We are living in the future shock

Climate change, terrorism, financial instability, peak oil, soaring food and fuel costs… whatever happened to the future?

According to the predictions of my childhood, by now I should be flying to work in an air car and have partially lost the use of my legs due to labour-saving technology rendering physical effort redundant; inter-planetary travel should be routine, and human conflict should have been left behind due to our super-evolved brains and generally more enlightened society.


The early 1970s was such an exciting time, at least if you were a kid. Science fiction thrived, encouraging a view of things to come as inevitably better. 2001: A Space Odyssey was already old, Concorde had just taken off, there were six manned moon landings between 1969 and 1972, Ziggy Stardust had landed to save us with Martian rock’n’roll… it really was great to be living in the past.

Yes, there was Vietnam, Watergate, Baader-Meinhof, the Yom Kippur War and the death of the 60s. But that was the present, which to the pre-teen consciousness is just background noise. Of course it was too good to last.

But if someone had told me back then that the early 21st century would in fact be a time of insecurity, paranoia and fear about the future I would have been amazed. That’s what’s happened, though faith in human progress replaced by an all-pervasive sense of impending doom.

Stuff