Essay: THE FUTURISTS: Looking Toward A.D. 2000

THE U.S. has always been a country in love with the future. Americans have never quite shared the traditional notion that prying into tomorrow is suspect if not downright dangerous—the sort of feeling that made Dante consign soothsayers to the fourth chasm of the Inferno. On the contrary, the U.S. readily accepted the fact that modern science established progress as a faith and the future as an earthly Eden. Yet recently, the American passion for the future has taken a new turn. Leaving Utopians and science-fiction writers far behind, a growing number of...