Whatever happened to the 21st Century?

                       At the 1962 World's Fair we were all giddy about it: 

  

In 2001, a century arrived -- but that same century also ended in that year. For my entire conscious life, I would turn glassy eyed at the mere mention of "the 21st Century." It meant sleekness, ingenuity, innovation, and silver suits with V-necks. It meant, well, the future.

Today, one-fifth the way through it, you almost never hear "the 21st Century" used to describe our time.

That term died the very year it was becoming reality -- as airplanes were crashed into the World Trade Towers -- because the fanfare surrounding the new century ceased at that moment. Today nearly the only time you hear "The 21st Century" used is on retro videos from the 20th Century gushing over the wonderful times just ahead.

When we look back at our often impetuous, giddy projections of what the upcoming 21st Century would be like, we call the picture that was painted "Retrofuturism." And thanks to the internet, there's no hiding the paintings.

Today, we're blasé about the present that was long awaited so eagerly. Perhaps that’s because we’re overwhelmed with details 24-7, we work such irregular hours, we grapple with crises happening like clockwork, and we've been collectively stabbed in the back by so many once-trusted institutions. 

Fifty and 60 years ago, the expression “This is the 20^th Century” was constantly used -- and favorably, to denote modernity and open-mindedness, or to prod someone to get with it and be modern.

Moreover, back in the 1960s and ‘70s when I was coming of age, the term “The Twenty-First Century” left us spellbound with anticipation. But then, at one time, so did awaiting a trip on the Titanic’s maiden voyage.

And today as we huddle shivering in the lifeboat of our $1,200 Covid-19 stimulus checks and had to fight furiously to avoid capsizing in another stolen election in 2020, we realize that we are never going to use the term “21^st Century,” at least not in the tones of awe we did for so long.

As said, the 21^st Century was a phenomenon of the 20^th. And would you believe it, they both ended,  in differing senses, with jet  airliners being crashed into skyscrapers killing 2,800 people. The same year HAL killing four innocents was supposed to be the extent of the carnage.

The deaths shown in “2001: A Space Odyssey” took a back seat in the consciousness of most viewers to the grandeur of dazzling technology, esoteric ideas and unencumbered space travel. Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke’s NASA-assisted 1968 movie masterpiece launched into hyperdrive the eagerness to reach the 2000s, as did Walter Cronkite’s 1967 TV series “The 21^st Century.”

Both were made in the middle of the decade that amounted to the crux of the 20^th Century’s baffling combination of great progress and atrocious horrors. The 20^th was a century to revere and revile. The 21^st, we had a feeling, would be all the good, with the bad eliminated. More a hope than a hypothesis.

It seems that sci-fi about the future is always utopian or dystopian – and with companies like GE, Union Carbide, and Philco-Ford underwriting Cronkite’s TV series and NASA contractors and other tech giants helping with Kubrick and Clarke’s movie, the awe factor triumphed over the worries about the century to come. 

We didn't yet associate these corporations with Neutron Jack Welch or the Bhopal catastrophe. Space Odyssey fans realized that the homicidal HAL wouldn't really happen, but the Howard Johnson's Earthlight room in the 1-G comfort space station evidently would.
So, the 21^st Century is gonna be a joy, folks. Get ready to luxuriate in it!

“One government report projects that by the year 2000, the United States will have a 30-hour work week and month-long vacation as the rule,” Cronkite tells us while lounging in a mock-up 21st Century living room designed by Philco-Ford in a March 1967 episode of his TV series named for that century. “A lot of this new free time will be spent at home.”

The iconic CBS anchorman then demonstrates how people will spend it by calling up the latest news, weather and music on separate desk top computers and wide screen TVs, then cooking in microwave ovens. Oh, and many will do their weekly 30 hours of work by those computers, in their homes.

“We may not have to go to work. The work would come to us,” Cronkite exuberantly says.

The same living room set is used in a 1967 film by Philco-Ford itself showing a household in 1999. The man (curiously, played by game show host Wink Martindale) pays the bills on a home computer and the Laura Petrie-like woman, still wearing a mid-60s bouffant flip, shops online and dutifully serves the family meals recommended by the computer based on the nutritional needs of the couple and their son Jamie, who is educated at home online.

 

The mother is played by Marj Dusay, best known for stealing Spock's brain in an infamously off-the-rails episode of the someday-retrofuturist Star Trek.

In 1999, this family drives a bubbletop car that combines Mustang informality with Jetsons tech.

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General Motors had legendary narrator Alexander Scourby nearly hyperventilating while celebrating what we now call Rainforest Depletion. In fairness, though, this ride got some forecasts right:

 

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So, how did Walter, Philco-Ford, GM, Clarke and Kubrick do at forecasting such a carefree congruent 21^st Century? Yes on home shopping, microwave ovens, and online school, but OMG did they ever not foresee the feminist movement!

And getting 30 hours of work per week means you’re heading for a shelter, not a month-long vacation! Far from ensuring that Jamie and his parents eat healthfully, high tech in the hands of the food industry has steered us to sugary, high-carb foods we overeat due to the effects on our brains of the high fructose corn syrup used widely. 

The Mom-Dad parental unit is yielding to child-care cooperatives and grandparents, and gasoline prices would make Dusay and Martindale’s 1967 eyes pop out, so forget about the Mustang-Jetsonmobile.

                   In 1974, the Internet foreseen, gender equity not. 

 
Of course, all predictions and forecasts involve the risk that one’s legacy will be to provoke ridicule, counterbalanced with the chance of being hailed as a visionary genius. So, give ‘em credit for putting themselves out there.

 

A tiny ember of that sleek Century 21 look and feel can be seen in Apple stores:

                        

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One of the most respected, if today lesser recognized forecasters of the future was Athelstan Spilhaus, the dean of the University of Minnesota’s Institute of Technology. He wrote “Our New Age,” an internationally syndicated weekly comic strip from 1957 to ’73 designed to get the youthful Beetle Bailey and Dick Tracy crowd more interested in science.

Athelstan Spilhaus and one of his "Our New Age" visions he published in Sunday comic sections.

Spilhaus, who helped plan the acclaimed Minneapolis and St. Paul downtown pedestrian skyways, wrote in a 1962 “Our New Age” strip illustrated with a person looking at text on a video screen:

 

“Researchers, thousands of miles away, may consult books in the Library of Congress or the British Museum.”

You bet your net he was right, but three years later, an “Our New Age” feature showed a man with his head connected to a cap hooked up to wires and declared:

 

“In 2016, man’s intelligence and intellect will be able to be increased by drugs and by linking human brains directly to computers.”

Yes, 2016 – the time of the Tide Pod challenge, flat-Earthers and a chronically bankrupt, non-literate, groping thug succeeding a Harvard lawyer and model husband and parent as Chief-Executive. Bring on those computers, Dr. Spilhaus – and those drugs!

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Brian Arbenz, who lives in Louisville, Ky. USA, likes to revisit the 21st Century of his youth when he feels nostalgic.

BONUS: The Internet in Phoenix, better houses, and food you plug in -- Click below for a full "21st Century" episode. CAUTION: at 15:16, don't eat the package:

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__MGYrcapdk&t=2s