Well then, here we are in 2014. How’s it suiting you so far?

2014 sounds like one of those far-flung future times imagined by film-makers or science fiction writers generations ago. Even when I was a child, I don’t think I could properly envisage what the world of 2014 would be like.

There would be people living on the moon, of course. There might have been some kind of limited nuclear war somewhere that had resulted in an irradiated wasteland filled with berserk mutants. There would possibly be aliens among us and our cities would be full of shiny towers surrounded by flying cars like clouds of midges.

Yeah, I was that sort of kid. I probably still am, though my visions of the future tend to be less utopian these days. The thing is, that future dreamed about by science fiction writers and impressionable children is actually here.

Think about the things that have become commonplace or nearly-normal in 2014. Mobile phones. Hand-held, touch-screen tablet computers. Impossible structures on the landscape – think of the London Gherkin. Electric cars. 3D printers which can actually create objects as if by magic. Dozens upon dozens of TV channels.

The elements of the future are here, but we also cling grimly on to the worst of the past. There are people in the world who don’t have clean water to drink. There are record numbers of people in the UK relying on handouts from foodbanks to put dinner on the table. We still think – a century after the start of what we rather foolishly dubbed The War to End All Wars – that it’s a good idea to sort out international problems by sending our young people to shoot at each other.

That bright, shiny future is here... if you can afford it. The naivety of those old films and books was that everyone would be flying around with jetpacks and taking holidays on the moon. You can put your name down for a trip into space on Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo, but it’ll cost you in the region of £150,000 for a short hop.

It feels as though that future promised to us all is only for the privileged few. The rest of us can – if we’re lucky – scrimp and save for the trinkets of the future, the iPads and the mobile phones, while many more people will find that the future isn’t what it was cracked up to be, as they join the queue for more free food and wonder why they can’t get a job.

In a profit-driven free market, it was never going to be any different, was it? The rich will continue to get richer, the poor will continue to get poorer, and the rest of us will be content to keep our heads down, watch our dozens of TV channels and continue to drive our cars that burn dwindling oil supplies rather than fly neatly through the air.

Still. At least it’s not Planet of the Apes, eh?