Ivividly recall, as a child in the 1980s, spending an inordinate amount of time watching classic Hanna-Barbera cartoons such as The Flintstones, The Yogi Bear Show, and The Jetsons in syndication. That last show, in particular, fed what I assume is a natural fascination that most young people have with the future. I’m sure if I looked hard enough through the ephemera of my childhood, I could find a few grade school notebooks festooned with poorly drawn images of flying cars, robot servants, and personal jetpacks. In those halcyon days of boyhood, one date stuck in my mind as “the future”—2020. That year, difficult to imagine but endlessly entertaining to dream about, was when everything would be different. World peace would be a reality. Technology would solve humanity’s and the planet’s ailments. And yes, cars would fly.
Alas, this “future” date has arrived, and though we each walk around with ...
