It just occurred to me, this is a technically slanted bulletin board with many future-oriented individuals participating; space enthusiasts, science weenies, techies, sci-fi freaks, etc. But most of the participants here are middle-aged (or older, I'm turning 61 this month) and I suspect most of us here, in spite of our futurist inclinations, are not inheriting the sort of world we anticipated. Even the discussions on Space would not have been too out of place in the 60s. (Remember, in 1969 a movie version of 2001 featuring an elaborate permanent collection of bases in earth orbit and on the moon and manned spacecraft to the outer planets, was accepted by movie audiences.) So was AI and ETI. All of this seems further away to us now than it did to us then.

The Zone may not be so much about the future as about it's participants' nostalgia for a future that seems indefinitely postponed. Essentially, we are a reactionary community, not a progressive one.