The future they predict? Don't count on it

Have you ever seen those 1950s pictorial projections of the future? You know the sort of thing - a family dressed in space suits walks down a futuristic street in the distant year 1993 as cars fly overhead and a robot lights dad's cigarette with a nuclear isotope.

It was all rubbish, wasn't it? It never happened.

OK, fair enough, these days everyone has a tiny walkie-talkie with which they can talk and play games with people on the other side of the planet. I'll give them that.