Originally Posted by
datlas
I love Star Trek (watched it as reruns as I was born in 1965), and although it was visionary for its time, watching it in 2021 does show it has not aged perfectly. Still a great show, of course.
For a while a few years back, I was really fascinated by past visions of the future. Mostly they're way off, because what people do is to extrapolate from where they are, and fail to consider disruptive new technologies or popular reactions against current trends. So, in the 1930s, people imagined a future with ginormous steam locomotives. Then the diesel-electric locomotive came along. In the 50s, people imagined that food would be replaced by pills with all the nutrition. Then people got tired of ever-more-tasteless food and cooking exotic foods became popular.
And everyone, in every era, expected flying cars. Nobody seemed to realize that would mean all the problems of street traffic, but in 3 dimensions.