Today, I don't want to comment at all about the movie itself. I just wanted to say that I'm lucky to be old enough to appreciate all the retro-future references.
I sort of remember the idea that there was nothing that a society couldn't do. People really felt that the future would be better. Technology and science were good. The future is here and it really is better but we've been in a collective funk for a few decades now.
Lest we forget though, during the same period of supposed-optimism, we were pretty damn sure that mutually-assured nuclear annihilation was inevitable.