[theandrewbailey]

> I'm in danger of straying into the rise of fear-based dystopia post-2000 so I'll leave it at that.

That rise happened in the 90s, if not earlier. Remember the sensationalism about people getting killed because of Y2K bugs?

[pjc50]

Whereas in the 80s the fear of civilization-wide extermination through nuclear war was widely present, in films and even pop songs. Y2K was the rare occasion where the sensationalism got the problem fixed, so nobody believes it was ever a risk. Like CFCs.

No, the 90s was a quiet time for everyone west of Yugoslavia and north of the Mediterranean. The "end of history" between the fall of the Berlin Wall and the fall of the World Trade Center.

I sometimes think we don't do futurism any more because we spent so much effort looking forward to the future of 2000, and there's no big date to look forward to quite like it.