The Countdown to 2000 AD

Here are a few observations about the most significant date I'll be likely to live through -- the Y2K(1).

I'd been looking forward to this for as long as I could remember. When I was a boy I was heavily into science and science fiction. Many stories and predictions used the year 2000 as a reference point, building the impression that the 21st Century would herald a new world of some kind, radically different to the old.

Of course it didn't work out like that. Predictions of household robots, aircars and moonbases came to nothing. Better vehicles became less important than better-looking vehicles. Space programmes took a back seat to game show programmes. The shorter working week became a memory rather than a goal and I still live in a wood house instead of a floating habitat dome.

(1) After I wrote this page another date unexpectedly became somewhat more significant - Sept 11th 2001.