There is a huge interest in a particular kind of future. The kind of future we saw portrayed and predicted on our TV and silver screens in the Sixties and Seventies. A future full of gleaming towers. moon bases, jet cars and space travel for all. Its often called a retro-future.
I suppose it was almost inevitable that this gleaming future seemed to the right, well, future. The West was still suffering the effects of World War II well into the late Fifties. Out of the rubble sprang a bright rocket of youthful vitality and tomorrow was in the hands of a new young generation, a generation that put Thunderbirds on our screens every week and landed men on the Moon for the first time.
As kids we lapped it up, every rocket, every space walk, every jet car. We were the audience and we loved it all. There was no question what the future would be like. It would definitely be a tomorrow from TV21 or Space Odyssey or UFO. We had the space toys and believed it all.
So what happened? Is that future still on its way? Is it already here in some kind of stealth mode? Are the tablets and ipads and smartphones and the net heralds of that tomorrow or are they actually it in a sort of diet form, a retro future-lite, forever diluted and never reaching full strength?
Is that gleaming future on its way readers or were we simply duped?
