We need another Gene Roddenberry

On this day in 1969 we landed on the moon.  It made me start thinking.  A few days ago there was an image floating around showing that we had reached the date that Marty McFly travels to in "Back to the Future II".  When the movie came out we were imagining hoverboards, auto fitting clothing, flying cars, and personal nuclear fusion power plants.  I then saw a preview for Total Recall, which stated that it takes place in the year 2082.  Obviously I haven't seen the remake yet, but based on the original it's certainly not an optimistic vision of the future.

So, it made me wonder, when and why did we loose our optimism for the future?  We've gone from hoping for and imagining the best to, in many ways, just hoping we'll still be here.  Don't get me wrong, I love William Gibson and Philip K. Dick as much as anyone and I think that Gibson's future is probably where we're headed, but I also love Start Trek and would like to think that we can achieve that in the distant future.

It might be cliche, but I at least partially blame the politicians.  The politicians on both sides, for nearly every position, campaign by saying that the entire world is going to burn if their oponent gets elected instead of focussing on how great things could be if we had a vision.  Of course, the public is to blame as well for buying into it.

I think we need a new JFK or a new Roddenberry.  We need someone that can offer us a positive vision for the future and show us a path to get there.  I think we saw hints of that when Obama was elected.  Now before everyone starts bitching and moaning and saying whether or not Obama is a great president or a terrible one, I think nearly everyone can agree that for a large part of the American population we at least had some hope for a while.  Sadly, it didn't last, but that's not the point of this post.  The point is, as I stated earlier, when and why did we loose our optimism?  Or, have we not lost it and I'm interpreting things incorrectly?