When the future was something to look forward to

"Progress used to be glamorous. For the first two thirds of the twentieth-century, the terms modern, future, and world of tomorrow shimmered with promise.... In the twentieth-century, ‘the future’ was a glamorous concept.
    "Joan Kron, a journalist and filmmaker born in 1928, recalls sitting on the floor as a little girl, cutting out pictures of ever more streamlined cars from newspaper ads. ‘I was fascinated with car design, these modern cars’, she says. ‘Industrial design was very much on our minds. It wasn’t just to look at. It was bringing us the future.’

"When Disneyland opened in 1955, Tomorrowland embodied the promise of progress. A plaque at the entrance announced ‘a vista into a world of wondrous ideas, signifying man’s achievements . . . a step into the future, with predictions of constructive things to come.’
    "Back then, the Year 2000 and the Twenty-first-century were glamorous destinations. Newspaper features and TV documentaries described a future filled with barely imaginable wonders. ...

"As a child, I felt lucky to be born in 1960. I’d be only 40 in the year 2000 and might live half my life in the magical new century. By the time I was a teenager, however, the spell had broken. The once-enticing future morphed into a place of pollution, overcrowding, and ugliness. Limits replaced expansiveness. Glamour became horror. Progress seemed like a lie.
    "Much has been written about how and why culture and policy repudiated the visions of material progress that animated the first half of the twentieth-century ... Like Peter Thiel’s famous complaint that ‘we wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters’, the phrase captures a sense of betrayal. Today’s techno-optimism is infused with nostalgia for the retro future.
    "But the most common explanations for the anti-Promethean backlash fall short. It’s true but incomplete to blame the environmental consciousness that spread in the late sixties. Rising living standards undoubtedly led people to value a pristine environment more highly. But environmental concerns didn’t have to take an anti-Promethean turn. They might have led instead to the expansion of nuclear power or the building of solar energy satellites. Cleaning up smoggy skies and polluted rivers could have been a techno-optimist enterprise. It certainly didn’t require curtailing space exploration. Eco-pessimism itself needs a fuller explanation...."

~ Virginia Postrel from her article 'The world of tomorrow'