Dialogue: Wonders of exploring outer space just a memory

As kids, when the year 2001 seemed eons away, we were convinced that space travel was indeed going to shape the future.

The Apollo missions gripped the world and we assumed they were just the first step in a series of space adventures that would herald the next millennium.

Space was surely the final frontier and 2001: A Space Odyssey a peek into the future.

So after jumping the gun last year here we are at the real start of the new millennium. And as we ponder finally reaching this landmark date we find ourselves a little let down. So this is the future. Is this all there is to it?

This is a far cry from what many futurists and sci-fi fanatics had us envisaging. By now we were supposed to have pet robots and designer space suits.

Where is the long-awaited TV telephone and pill food?

We hadn't predicted that the real revolution was not to be in outer space but in a virtual universe that every man could explore. And those with the real power over the masses would not be the ones who had won the space race, but those who had helped us to navigate through an artificially created cyber world. Inner space - the final frontier.

The development of the internet has had an extraordinary impact on everyone's lives - not just a chosen few.

It is changing how people, industries and countries communicate, trade and function as communities.

The worldwide web creates worlds within worlds and allows people to spend hours exploring, socialising, learning and discovering without leaving their seats.

In parallel, we have become disenchanted with outer space as a source of inspiration and awe.

Having been programmed to live in a culture where marketing shapes our reality, we are conditioned to a regular diet of bigger and better and are keen to dispose of yesterday's concepts on a consistent basis to make way for the new.

Against this backdrop, outer space does not seem to have kept up. Compare it to the cumulative technological advances in other areas.

In music, new formats emerge almost every year. In 40-odd years we have romped through the latest and greatest methods of delivery from 45s to LPs, reel-to-reel, eight-track, cassettes, CDs, mini discs and now mp3.

But since man landed on the moon, in almost the same time frame there have been no new initiatives that have got the whole planet looking up.

Sure there have been a few blips of interest - the Hubble Telescope, Ronald Reagan's Star Wars phase and the Mars Pathfinder.

To rouse a bit of enthusiasm, Nasa even tried the retro angle, blowing the dust off John Glenn and sending him skyward again. Our waning interest in new horizons of the astral kind is represented perfectly by the Mir space station - a crippled relic of the past that has become an Earthly embarrassment. It is somewhat poignant that it will be put out of its misery in the year 2001.

So here we are officially in the future and we seem no closer to any major space breakthroughs. Not only are jet packs noticeably absent but we are still flying in planes designed in the 60s. Even the supersonic Concorde jet was conceived decades ago.

Despite our growing capabilities in inner space, life was more inspired when we believed the future would be like a sci-fi movie, with the promise of endless possibilities and ideas we could never even conceptualise.

Although some people may believe that virtuality holds as much excitement, it is still a man-made world drawing inspiration from and setting its parameters by the people who tap into it. And when they log off they're still just in their undies, in a bedroom with posters peeling off the wall and with mum calling them for dinner.

We have some old curtains hanging in our son's room featuring astronauts, spaceships and planets. They symbolise the wonderment of youth, the what-ifs, and a huge sense of adventure.

But now that kids are talking about designing PlayStation games as a dream career rather than becoming astronauts, I wonder what will be printed on my great-grandsons' curtains.

In this information era of knowledge economies, outer space is the only thing that still seems mysterious and unknown. But like most things heavy on hype, outer space exploration was light on delivery. And in a society hooked on instant gratification, inner space provides far more entertainment and interest to most people.

2001 ... who would have dreamed that by now we would have lost sight of the bigger picture?