“Assuming that we dodged the 1984, Brave New World bullet, our future was supposed to be a sort of technocratic, atomic-powered, computer-controlled, antiseptic, space-travelling Jerusalem that would at last free us from the curse of Eden and original sin. We expected some how, some way that we would be on the road to being freed from the human condition. We expected a sort of bloodless, benign French Revolution with Hugo Gernsback as our Voltaire and Carl Sagan as our Robespierre. And what did we get? The City of Man with Tivo. The fact is, science fiction and popular science had set the bar so high that only the Second Coming with ray guns would have satisfied.”

I stumbled over this site a while ago and bookmarked it for later reading, but I only got around to look at it more systematically yesterday evening. It’s actually a great read, well-written and at times very funny, at times very informative. The fact that the site uses a FrontPage template from, what, 1996? is a nice touch as well.

link