That thing about calculating our age in 2000...I came up with 46, which seemed really old...older than my father, for god's sake!

When I consider the thought-problem of whether I'd go back in time for a do-over, I always conclude that hell no, I wouldn't repeat the second half of the twentieth century. That would be long stretches of boredom punctuated by intense disgust.

So, too, I wonder: Are we really disappointed that we're not living in the world predicted by mid-twentieth science fiction? Wouldn't foreknowledge make this world, too, boring?

Another Gedankenexperiment: I've put myself back into the head of a sci-fi soaked teenage, and considered how this world with it's global ubiquitous digital network talking to plastic slabs in everybody's pockets, would look to me. Particularly the kind of society it's wrought, with its goods and its horribles (I also don't think I could've imagined Donald Trump...that one would've been just too ridiculous). And (to finally bring it home), the idea that this internet would let me look at a DSN display showing status of communications with effing interstellar spacecraft, now that's sublime. I can ride along on some of humanity's most epic journeys, on my phone. What a crazy world.