It’s 2010 and I’m Still Not Vacationing on the Moon
This Slate article about Omni magazine reminded me of just how influential that publication was to me as a kid. Along with this 1982 book, The Kids’ Whole Future Catalog, which I used to read and read and re-read, Omni inspired my pre-tween dreams about the future, and helped to offset my anxieties about nuclear war. (I grew up in the shadow of NORAD and Cheyenne Mountain, so I spent a pretty unhealthy chunk of time calculating my survival odds after seeing The Day After on television.) Robots, space vacations, and technological solutions to poverty and inequality: these were the subjects of my dreams about 2010. It’s a year laden with so much sci-fi meaning. This is the year we’re supposed to make contact, yo.
Being a few days away from 2010 feels all sorts of mixed up. Our dreams of the future from twenty years ago just seem really silly now, even as I think many of us are actually pretty disappointed (if not because we don’t have robot housecleaners than because we still – unbelievably – haven’t prioritized finding and implementing solutions to things like poverty and climate change). And yet, this ever-increasing digital world we are living in feels pretty dang amazing. So, at the end of this year, I’m thinking a lot about past-future hopes, present disappointments, and the magic of my lived reality.
Compounding all of this is a general feeling of elation that we’re leaving behind the aughts, or the zips, or the zeroes, or whatever we want to call this last decade. Yes, I know that the new decade won’t officially start until 2011. But I don’t really want to slog through another year of the 2000s. Most people I know don’t really want to, either. (Some of my friends have, in fact, declared the 2000s The Worst Decade Ever, although I don’t feel entitled to make that judgement.) The catalog of horrors feels almost endless: Bush, 9-11, evangelicalism, torture, class divisions, the worsening state of public education, wars on two fronts, the swelling of the prison population, natural disasters exacerbated by climate issues… Blarg, blarg, blarg, and BLARG. When I stood on the National Mall and watched Barack Obama deliver his inaugural speech at the beginning of this year, I experienced as much relief as I did hope. Finally, it seemed, someone had the courage to tell us that there are no good and fast answers to our problems, but that it is our job to undertake the difficult task of making meaningful change, anyway. That commitment is what really gives me hope, after all.
So as much as I don’t have dreams anymore about my life on Saturn (yes, it has rings, so it MUST be the best planet), I also don’t have any illusions that life in this new decade will be that much easier or better. As Buckaroo Banzai, that pivotal figure from the world of early 1980s cult sci-fi said, “No matter where you go, there you are.”
So here we are. And it feels good to hit the reset button (even symbolically) and start a new decade (even if it’s not really) and get started with the hard work of reinventing our present and re-imagining our future. I’m elated about this! And I hope you are, too. So let’s make and achieve some big goals, and let’s do some real good in the universe.
Happy New Year, readers and friends!
The Book: 
