I had to work on New Year’s Eve, 1999. I work with computers. Like many other people where I work, I was expected to be on-site in case of Y2K problems.

We had done extensive testing and preparation in advance, and nobody was very worried about any significant problems cropping up. So we had a sort of party, up in a conference room. We ate, and drank soft drinks, and flipped the channels on a small TV, watching the major networks’ coverage of the long-awaited dawning of the year 2000.

Someone expressed a wish for cable TV, so we could watch something other than this boring New Year’s Eve stuff. We told him it would be the same thing on all 200 cable channels.

“Oh? What about Cartoon Network?” he said.

“Even Cartoon Network. They’ll be running a Jetsons marathon—live!”

If you don’t believe we’re living in the amazing world of the future, consider this: today is Louise Brown’s 25th birthday.