When Stanley Kubrick released 2001: A Space Odyssey in 1968—and even when Prince recorded the song “1999” in 1982—the twenty-first century felt farther away than it actually was. Viewed from a distance, it promised a future in which everything would be different, and probably better. But as that distance decreased to nil, the year 2000 began to resemble what it actually was—just another year, negligibly different from the year preceding it.
