I don’t know about you, but I am completely blown away by the fact that it is already 2014. We are already officially 14 years into the 21st Century, and 14 years past the highly-anticipated, millennium-changing year of 2000. Being a 90s kid, I still constantly look back on my childhood and say things like, “Did that really happened 15 or 20 years ago? It seemed like only yesterday!” In addition to being surprised at how quickly time as flown by and how many years have passed, I’m also surprised at how similar things in 2014 look and seem when compared with the 1990s. I use the 90s because that was the decade I spent much of my childhood in, and back then, I thought the 2010s would be a completely different world from the one we’re living in now. Did the majority of people think that way, or was I one of the few who did?
As a kid I thought that life today could resemble a movie like “Back to the Future II”, “Robocop” or “Blade Runner”, all of which were films made in the 1980s, but took place in what was supposed to be the “Futuristic 2010s”. I also remember teachers talking about how different America would look and be like in the 21st Century. One teacher predicted that by the 2010s, the average person could pay to take trips to the moon with a professional astronaut guide. I also remember hearing about how by now we could have flying automobiles, common use of jetpacks, flying hoverboards, working robots in the home and workplace, funkier clothing and hairstyles, futuristic-looking furniture and architecture, and other things that stand out as different from what we see or use today.
Heck, I thought that by the 2010s I could have a stylish new car that flew in the air, or at least a flying hoverboard like the one Marty McFly (from the Back to the Future films) had in the year 2015.
Now, here we are one day into 2014, and life isn’t mind-blowingly futuristic like some have predicted. I’ll admit there are differences from the past, like much greater use and capabilities for cellphones and the internet now, but several things are still the same. For fashion, it seems like adults and kids still dress and wear their hair similarly to how they did then. Our cars still look the same as they did before, and unfortunately, they still only drive on roads and don’t fly at all. People still work normal jobs they have for decades and kids still attend school in normal school buildings with human teachers. We also use pretty much the same ence when comparing songs, movies and TV shows from 20, or even only 10, years before the present time. However, today I can listen to a 90s song of any genre, or watch a movie or TV show from the 90s, and it all sounds or looks pretty similar to a new song, movie or TV show from the 2010s. Back then, I thought that with 21st Century technology, entertainment today would have to sound or look completely different than it had before.
So, after hearing 21st Century predictions from people while actually living in the 90s, I must say that 2014 isn’t what I expected it to be once we finally got here. Who knows, maybe we’ll have to wait until 2034 to get flying cars, robots who do work for us, trips to the Moon for your average Joe and notable differences in entertainment. Only time will tell.
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