You might get a different perspective on the present when you reach your 50's, as I have. I used Amazon's book-previewing service to read parts of W. Patrick McCray's book, The Visioneers, and I realized that I could nearly have written that book myself because my life has intersected with the story he tells at several points. McCray focuses on Gerard K. O'Neill and Eric Drexler, and in my Amazon review I pointed out that after a generation, or nearly two in O'Neill's case, we can get the impression that their respective ideas don't work. No one has gotten any closer to becoming a space colonist since the 1970's, and we haven't seen the nanomachines Drexler promised us in the 1980's which can produce abundance and make us "immortal."

So I suspect you youngsters will probably have a similar letdown waiting for you when you reach your 40's and 50's, and realize that you'll wind up aging and dying like everyone else without having any technological miracles to rescue you.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Visioneers-Scientists-Nanotechnologies-Limitless/dp/0691139830/