Nuclear-powered vacuum cleaners...

So it's 2005. What happened to all the retro-futuristic predictions. Where are the nuclear-powered vacuum cleaners? What about the rocket car? The hover car? The personal jetpack? The underwater cities? The robot butler? The silver shiny clothes? The moon base?

We had some pretty big ambitions for the future, and I think someone from the 1950's would be horribly disappointed. Actually, you can probably ask your local 75 year-old person for their opinion on this. But look at what we were able to accomplish... in the past few decades, we've created:

• Hybrid cars... sort of. Okay, so they aren't really being widely used, but they are out there on the market. The problem is that most people want silly cars like H2 Hummers.
• Robot vacuum cleaners. Okay, so it's not nuclear-powered, but these little Roomba vacuums are kinda cool.
• A global internet system! Hey man, William Gibson called it. The internet really has changed the way we do things. It's not just for easy access pr0n...
• GPS-positioning. A complex satellite network that can pinpoint your exact location on Earth. It's very handy, especially if you like geocaching.
• USB memory sticks. We don't have to fumble around with punch cards, data cassettes, or floppy disks anymore.
• 7 Police Academy movies! Representing the pinnacle of human cinematography, future civilizations will wonder why we stopped at Police Academy 7: Mission to Moscow.