2020 or something

Well, it's here, this crazy date that seemed so remote when I was a child, featuring in futuristic prediction TV shows and novels pretending to know and understand what was to come. So many impressive ideas appeared and seemed like sensible predictions, only to be consigned to the 'daft ideas of history' bin along the way.

In fairness 2020 is only one of the dates used - and there were many - but the most attractive, symmetrical one, perhaps, and a very nice one it appears to be. And now it's here, with the first month nearly at an end and the days growing longer.

But what of our world, which is still without air scooters, fishbowl helmets and the like, even without aliens as far as we are aware (though I am suspicious of a couple of the neighbours where I'm currently living...)? How has it evolved and where will it be after this year?

For one the world seems like a very humdrum progression from, say, 1960; there is very little that is truly revolutionary and unrecognisable, for all the amazing technology surrounding us. Cars still have four wheels and function in a similar fashion to the contraptions of the time, if far more efficiently, with electric vehicles perhaps the only major differentiation, with the same being largely true of motorbikes, even though some of today's machinery would have left the younger me salivating; the principle is largely the same, but evolved.

Our homes equally are more advanced but easily recognisable and fairly similar, even if their equipment is far superior - there are very few 'space pod' type homes around - with a simple layout. Fashions may affect our clothes and personal stuff but they too wouldn't completely confuse a visitor from the previous century, apart from yes, computers and their power, which have given rise to all sorts of convenient and fun gimmicks but little that is essential to humankind's existence or, indeed, survival. The i-pad (or similar) is fun and even useful, true, but not really life-changing if we choose to be honest.

Look around you with an open mind, then go back to 1960 either in your memory if, like me, you are an aged creature, or in archives and their photographs. Many of the clothes we wear today are similar if not identical, furniture also, though mass production has provided us with lighter materials, sleeker designs and cheaper prices.

Under the surface a lot has changed, of course, mainly for the better. The 'futurists' of my childhood, however, imagined a radically different world which has failed to appear; in many ways I am grateful for that. Perhaps our children will go around with fishbowls on their heads and travel to the Planet Zog (or wherever) for a holiday or, indeed, to work!