Why does 2012 sound so surreal?

Welcome to 2012...*cue weird electronica soundtrack and move into the sci-fi section of the library*. I'm pretty sure I know where I've been the last 30 years, but, still, living - or actually being very much alive and kicking in 2012 sounds very futuristic and surreal. Nothing in this faraway future looks the way we thought it would look back when I was a kid watching "Night Gallery" through the holes in my grandmother's afghan. A true child of the 60s, I grew up with images from "The Jetson's," "Star Trek," "2001: A Space Odyssey," and everyone's perennial favorite, "Soylent Green," disturbingly fixed in my long-term memory, so the reality of 2012 next to those fantasies/nightmares is rather jarring. Why haven't we figured more things out? Why haven't we fixed more of our problems? Why do we still drive gas-powered cars on regular old asphalt roads? At least we're not eating one another...yet. Reason enough to celebrate.