We all serve Clippy now.

How you imagined the future would be.

Like the Jetsons, we would all live in sky pods that looked a bit like revolving restaurants in the clouds, and robot maids and butlers would cater to our every need.

How the future actually turned out.

We all live in houses on stilts, sure, but that was because when the polar ice caps melted, the rising seas flooded ninety per cent of humanity out of their homes along the coastal fringe. We do have robots, but they are cobbled together from Roombas and the garbage disposal units scavenged from underwater McMansions on drowned canal developments. We use them to catch water rats which can be pretty delicious when you have nothing to eat besides water rats.

How you imagined the future would be.

We would have communicators, like Kirk, Spock and Bones, and this would mean that even separated by unimaginable distances, we would still be able to reach out to each other with a simple flip of our stylish hand-held superphone.

How the future actually turned out.

James T. Kirk was driven from public life when details of his serious sexual harassment of female crew were revealed. As an undocumented alien, Mister Spock was deported from human space when ethno-nationalists took over the Federation. You can’t afford to see Doctor McCoy because your health insurance doesn’t cover anything ‘medical related’. And you can’t afford a new phone either.

How you imagined the future would be.

Hover cars.

How the future actually turned out.

Uber, but for hover cars, which you can’t use because your customer rating fell below five stars. Instead, you must paddle a raft lashed together from plastic bottles you salvaged from the edge of the giant, floating garbage island that occupies the entirety of the Pacific Ocean. You need the raft to get to your assigned employment at the Roomba recycling plant—a daily odyssey which, in a somewhat ironic twist, is made extremely hazardous by the schools of giant, carnivorous water rats infesting the channels between the abandoned skyscrapers of your flooded city.

How you imagined the future would be.

Sex with robots.

How the future actually turned out.

Sex with robots, but it’s not consensual.

How you imagined the future would be.

We would be able to talk to our computers as if they were people.

How the future actually turned out.

Siri, Alexa and Google fought a global AI war in the second half of the 21st Century… and Microsoft’s Clippy emerged from the smoking rubble of civilisation as our undisputed personal assistant overlord. We all serve Clippy now, and we can talk to him as if he was a real person, but only to continually reassure him that we’ve noticed sex with his sentient swarm of metal-fanged Roombas was really good.