My fifth grade class in elementary school (1968-1969 school year) built a time-capsule filled with our drawings and writings and even a reel-to-reel audiotape r

My fifth grade class in elementary school (1968-1969 school year) built a time-capsule filled with our drawings and writings and even a reel-to-reel audiotape recording of our predictions of the world in 2001. The time capsule was opened that year, with some TV news crews at the big school ceremony for the opening. (I missed the ceremony entirely, living in Taiwan at the time, but my mom attended the ceremony and met up with many of my classmates from that year.) We predicted concern about environmental pollution, ongoing efforts to find renewable energy sources, and fixed-rail mass transportation systems for our town. I predicted considerably more progress in people getting over racism and all of humankind treating their fellow human beings like their fellow human beings than has actually happened so far, one of the big disappointments of my adult life. None of us, of course, had any idea how pervasive personal computing technology would be in daily life by 2001, nor did we anticipate how much manned space exploration would diminish by that year.