I happened to catch the moment when the space shuttle Atlantis lifted off on Thursday. Apparently it was going into space on a mission of science. I was 12 years old when the space shuttle Challenger blew up, and I thought we would come up with some better way of traveling into space by the time I was 33. Twenty-one years later, and the space shuttle lifts off not to go to the moon or Mars or time travel, but it's off into space on a mission of science. Sigh.

Come to think of it, I thought a lot of things would be different when I grew up. I thought we would have flying cars or at least land speeders. Instead, I can still get a Chevy Impala or Ford Mustang. If I wanted to be hip and modern, I could go for the popular Toyota cars & trucks. I didn't think much about gas when I was a kid, as it cost under a dollar a gallon. Now that the future has come, I wonder why the same crummy gas costs three times as much.

When they raze landscape to put up a building, they still call it progress. How many times can we use and reuse the same phrases for our actions? A building is not progress. It's a building.

We've had The War on Drugs, The War on Terror, The War on the Middle Class, and of course, a few actual wars. None of them has had clear winners. I still can't figure out why we think waging war on people, places and things will create positive results.

What happened to Utopia? You know, some strangely socialist (but not in a political way) world where everyone soaks up the renaissance of life and living. Sort of like Riza on Star Trek: The Next Generation. What do we get in reality? A housing crisis.

We have come up with no drug to cure our ailments. The common cold is still common. Flu still gets a season. Celebrities are doped up with all kinds of pills, and the masses don't have adequate health insurance. Calling Dr. Kevorkian.

Since I was a kid, we've come up with the Internet (so I write this column most weeks). What seemed to be a valid research and information tool in the 90s is now a shopping, chatting, spamming device where the message has a twenty percent chance of being reliable. I don't know the real percentage, but since this is posted on the Internet, it doesn't really matter if I fact check.

As near as I can tell, we haven't come up with any new food. Now that I live in a mid-sized city, I can get a range of types of food, but they are still dishes that have been served for decades. Of course, in the future, food always looked like multi-colored custard, so maybe it's good that we haven't progressed that much with our cuisine.

People told me to study math & science & law. I could have become an engineer, astronaut or lawyer. I did study those things for a while. These days, I'm a cab driver, and I maintain it's still the best job I've ever had. These days, engineers still can't make a better space ship for astronauts to fly, so lawyers sue. Glad I missed that rat race.

The truth is that the futuristic dreaming turns out to be just a dream. My very own robot never came in the mail, and really, they are just barking mechanisms with batteries. All of the science fiction writers had better ideas than the actual inventors. Where have you gone, Benjamin Franklin? Our nation turns its lonely eyes to you.

Basically, when we talk about the future these days, all we mean is who will be the next president. Will it be the black guy, the white woman, or the old guy? I'm pulling for the black guy. Welcome to your future, America.

Since the future has failed my childhood dreams, I'm spending my time these days soaking up the present. I don't expect things to improve much in my lifetime, so I will try to eat well, drink well and try not to let the failure of finding the wormhole to the alternative universe get me down.

Life is what it is. The future cannot save you or me, so live long and prosper.

Chris Jungle never became an engineer and cannot beam you up.