Back in the dim dark days before the interconnected series of tubes fed all sorts of random crap into the back of our computers, The Future always seemed so much more distant and, well, seductive.

In a joyous moment of random web trawlage recently I rediscovered The Usborne Book of the Future - A Journey to the Year 2000 and beyond. To say this was the formative book of my youth would be a massive understatement, and it's alarming to note just how far we have come, and how far we haven't, since the book came out in 1979.

But this wee journey into nostalgia doesn't end there. The Singing Blackbird has unearthed the remarkable (or remarkably bad) Street Hawk, to which I raise the stakes in crap 80s 'the future is now' television shows with Automan. Behold the future, as it was elaborately imagined in post-Tron 1983. Crazy times...

Fun Fact #2976: The first (of all 9) episode of Automan screened exactly 25 years ago today.