New Years eve 1999 fell on a Friday, I was in a meeting in the office when 5:00pm, US West Coast, rolled around. As we were wrapping up I impulsively said, "what say we find out what the 21st century is like?" And phoned a friend on his cell phone in London, where it was around 1am. He was in a club and somewhat the worse for drink but I put him on speaker anyway. He picked up his cue as I knew he would and started talking about the flying cars and the despotic global supercomputer...