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So this happens to be my 2,000th "official" post (even though it would have been a few more, once upon a time) - hallelujah!
As I have now clocked up 2,000 posts on the DYR meter with this very post, I thought that I would start a new thread about, appropriately enough, the year 2000 when it always seemed to be in the future when we were growing up.
The tabloid newspapers still had this "Tomorrow's World" feel towards the year 2000 as late as 1995, saying that a lot of technology would be in existence and a lot of things predicted during the latter half of the 20th century. Even as a 1980s child, the year 2000 was still a long way off - well, 1978 was a long time up to the mid 1980s for obvious reasons.
That year was seen as a yardstick or even a deadline as to achieving something - when Hollywood actor George Burns appeared on Des O'Connor Tonight in 1992 at the age of 96, my late father said that he will live to be 100, while my late mother said that he will live to see the year 2000 - my father was correct as he died a few weeks after his 100th birthday in 1996. The Queen Mother's life was also used as a yardstick to measure time as we knew that she was 86 in 1986 for example.
But what about 2000 from, let's say, a 1984 perspective? Did the thought of approaching the year 2000 seem scary to yourself, and that anything after 2000 seem "out of bounds" and into another dimension? Then we had those space series and parodies that by 2000 we would be in the space age, but it wasn't quite like that when we eventually got there. Space 1999, anyone? 2001 - A Space Odyssey? Perhaps George Orwell had missed a trick by choosing an earlier year such as 1984.
What about those who lived in the 1950s and 1960s and viewed 2000 from back then? I know that in the final three decades in which is the scope of this forum, they were decades which got us prepared for the year 2000. After six decades of imperialism in the 20th century, along come the 1960s where one starts to break away from the conservative ways of life inherited from the start of that century. And then we had colour television, decimalisation, and all that - life started to be familiar to us. Just like the Millennium Bug, I thought that the dates stopped at 99 and couldn't go any further - what was to happen after that? Since 2000 I have always written dates with the year in four digits rather than just the final two which I actually did up until 1999.
At school in the 1980s, it felt that the 1990s was in the future but in a more reachable fashion. When we had a go at writing our own horoscopes in class I wrote that "I will have lots of luck in the 1990s". The teacher actually commented that I would probably have a long time to wait, even though it was written in 1989!
So what did you think about the year 2000 being in the future when you were around growing up back in the 1960s, 1970s or 1980s - did you have any goals to achieve by then such as be a millionaire or something?
As I have now clocked up 2,000 posts on the DYR meter with this very post, I thought that I would start a new thread about, appropriately enough, the year 2000 when it always seemed to be in the future when we were growing up.
The tabloid newspapers still had this "Tomorrow's World" feel towards the year 2000 as late as 1995, saying that a lot of technology would be in existence and a lot of things predicted during the latter half of the 20th century. Even as a 1980s child, the year 2000 was still a long way off - well, 1978 was a long time up to the mid 1980s for obvious reasons.
That year was seen as a yardstick or even a deadline as to achieving something - when Hollywood actor George Burns appeared on Des O'Connor Tonight in 1992 at the age of 96, my late father said that he will live to be 100, while my late mother said that he will live to see the year 2000 - my father was correct as he died a few weeks after his 100th birthday in 1996. The Queen Mother's life was also used as a yardstick to measure time as we knew that she was 86 in 1986 for example.
But what about 2000 from, let's say, a 1984 perspective? Did the thought of approaching the year 2000 seem scary to yourself, and that anything after 2000 seem "out of bounds" and into another dimension? Then we had those space series and parodies that by 2000 we would be in the space age, but it wasn't quite like that when we eventually got there. Space 1999, anyone? 2001 - A Space Odyssey? Perhaps George Orwell had missed a trick by choosing an earlier year such as 1984.
What about those who lived in the 1950s and 1960s and viewed 2000 from back then? I know that in the final three decades in which is the scope of this forum, they were decades which got us prepared for the year 2000. After six decades of imperialism in the 20th century, along come the 1960s where one starts to break away from the conservative ways of life inherited from the start of that century. And then we had colour television, decimalisation, and all that - life started to be familiar to us. Just like the Millennium Bug, I thought that the dates stopped at 99 and couldn't go any further - what was to happen after that? Since 2000 I have always written dates with the year in four digits rather than just the final two which I actually did up until 1999.
At school in the 1980s, it felt that the 1990s was in the future but in a more reachable fashion. When we had a go at writing our own horoscopes in class I wrote that "I will have lots of luck in the 1990s". The teacher actually commented that I would probably have a long time to wait, even though it was written in 1989!
So what did you think about the year 2000 being in the future when you were around growing up back in the 1960s, 1970s or 1980s - did you have any goals to achieve by then such as be a millionaire or something?
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