For seemingly endless streams of commentators and people with too much time, the 21st Century was going to be filled with amazing inventions that made everyday chores and hassles a thing of the past.
Throughout the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s these expectations built up to saturation point: cars would fly, robots would baby sit whilst simultaneously cooking, cleaning and entertaining dinner guests, a missile defence shield would protect us from aliens/Soviets/the UN whilst we slept - a high tech utopia would be shared by all.
The economic boom and bust that came back into play with a vengeance in the 1990s, combined with the realisation that the environment is deteriorating, should have shocked some sense into the population but instead it merely gave rise to the belief that we could just go live in a bubble on the Moon and leave of the Earth's problems behind.
This overlooked the fact that whist the political elites and those rich enough to live on the moon would happily do so at the first given chance they would leave everyone else behind without blinking an eyelid; voters trying to get governments out of power is rather ineffective when the government is out in space.
The myth of technology solving everything continued unabated even as the 21st Century failed to instantly deliver its promises; only now politicians were better adapting to abuse the delusions and dreams of the young. Focus groups grew exponentially in the late 1990s and in turn straight faced politicians of all parties promised the unsuspecting public that we could colonise space, tap the natural resources of Mars or even Uranus.
Perhaps naively, the youth of the 1980s, having grown up on a diet of true pop culture disposability, wanted and believed they could make a difference to the world, albeit in the guise of a Rambo or She-Ra modelled figure, or perfect an environmentally sustainable business which makes a profit to reinvest in the company whilst not pillaging local communities. There were hundreds of other aspirations that now seem as realistic as George W. Bush becoming a member of Mensa through his own hard work and intellect.
Political pundits now bemoan the fact that "young people" spurn the opportunity to participate in convention mainstream politics but instead throw themselves in single issues groups, music or working a day job when they'd rather be a millions miles away; what they don't accept is they made us, and as futile as the hope for a better world is, at least we didn't announce the intention to colonise Mars.
