Question about 2015
[Edit: Many thanks to 
rialian and
musesfool, both of whom answered this question on Dreamwidth. Guess I need to re-watch the Back to the Future trilogy this year.]
What is it about 2015, anyway? Why does that particular number on the calendar seem to be triggering a massive wave of "We're living in the future now"? I could understand it in 2000, when all the numbers were changing all at once and we were somehow in or almost in a brand-new millennium, and I understood it in 2001 (a Space Odyssey!) even though I'd been conversing with HAL for a couple of years by that point. And I'll certainly understand it in 2020, which sounds more like what I want my vision corrected to than it sounds like an actual year. But for some reason, 2015 has got all the Gen Xers and Baby Boomers I know asking "What year did you say this is again?!" Why is that? Is it some pop-cultural thing stuck in everybody's consciousness but mine? Or is there something else, some deep numerological significance of which I've been blissfully unaware?
rialian and
musesfool, both of whom answered this question on Dreamwidth. Guess I need to re-watch the Back to the Future trilogy this year.]
What is it about 2015, anyway? Why does that particular number on the calendar seem to be triggering a massive wave of "We're living in the future now"? I could understand it in 2000, when all the numbers were changing all at once and we were somehow in or almost in a brand-new millennium, and I understood it in 2001 (a Space Odyssey!) even though I'd been conversing with HAL for a couple of years by that point. And I'll certainly understand it in 2020, which sounds more like what I want my vision corrected to than it sounds like an actual year. But for some reason, 2015 has got all the Gen Xers and Baby Boomers I know asking "What year did you say this is again?!" Why is that? Is it some pop-cultural thing stuck in everybody's consciousness but mine? Or is there something else, some deep numerological significance of which I've been blissfully unaware?