Next week marks a very unassuming event, one almost no one will notice. We will be three-fifths of the way from 1985 to “the future” of “Back to the Future II” — Oct. 21, 2015. (Feel free to insert relevant jokes about the Chicago Cubs not winning the World Series until then.)

Yet, as I walk around the world of 2003, it seems a lot closer to 1985 than 2015. The computers are faster, the clothes are a bit different and the cars are more streamlined, but in general, not much has changed.

In other words: It’s the beginning of the 21st century, so where’s my flying car? My in-house robot? My trip to a moon resort? In the words of Yogi Berra, “The future ain’t what it used to be.”

Science fiction about the future and, in some cases, science fact predicting the future, haven’t quite panned out. Consider “2001: A Space Odyssey:” Since the book/movie came out, this has been the sort of “benchmark” idea of the 21st century everyone was hoping for. In 1968, men had not yet landed on the moon, yet this movie predicted work on the moon and shuttle flights.

Today, 2001 has come and gone. U.S. shuttle flights have been grounded after the Columbia disaster, and the general public has what in the 1960s would have been considered an amazing indifference toward space exploration. Meanwhile, China launched its equivalent of Yuri Gagarin and Alan Shepard into space this week.

If plots or stories don’t delve into the apocalyptic, they at least try to be futuristic. But that’s probably because a reality-based future is actually pretty boring. Would anyone be interested in reading or watching a story set in “the future” that only noted a few minor changes to the world of the present?

As we’ve watched these predictions, we get a little upset when the time comes. The entries into 2000 and 2001 weren’t all that different than entries into 1980 and 1981. Today, we have seen the future, and it looks a lot like the past.

Is that a good thing? Yes and no. On the one hand, being able to go places and do things currently impossible is something many are interested in. On the other hand, there’s a chance the future ends up as the bleak or post-apocalyptic world of “1984” or “Terminator 2,” although maybe not quite to those extremes.

One recent “post-apocalyptic” description of the future comes from John Titor. According to a Web site dedicated to him (johntitor.com) he made himself known on the Internet in November 2000, and left in March 2001. He left a lot of clues about the United States between “our time” and 2036, generally not leading to anything good.

Titor says the United States will collapse into a 10-year-long civil war beginning in 2004-05, which will begin with a Ruby Ridge or Waco-type incident. A Web site with the foresight to list Titor’s claims with the U.S. Copyright Office, johntitor.strategicbrains.com, says citizens realized the country had forever changed by 2008:

“As time goes on the civil war will become more and more a continuous conflict between paranoid government forces headquartered in the cities, against perceived or imagined threats in the rural civilian population. The American government will wage war against its own citizens, winning most of the battles, but the battling will drag on for years.

“In the nuclear war of 2015 our cities will be primary targets, so the civil war will end then in favor of the rurals when the government and its domestic armies are destroyed. In this way the nuclear war will be regarded by the survivors as a good thing.”

Titor also says the United States still exists but has split into five regions — each with its own president — and the capital is now Omaha, Neb. The only non-textual clues he left to substantiate his claims include a bad scan of a manual cover dated March 21, 2034, other scans of scans or photographs, and a few images of the time machine, which was placed inside a four-wheel-drive 1987 Chevy.

Are the preceding four paragraphs a bunch of lies, an elaborate hoax sprung upon a gullible Internet community? Titor says the civil war began “as the result of increasingly oppressive police state tactics like warrantless searches and other violations of American civil liberties.” There are those out there who believe such actions are happening even today. Should that be considered coincidence, or a grain of truth?

Alternately, this column could just be the equivalent of a butterfly flapping its wings. As with all those who predict the future and end up failing, we will only know if we were wrong when we get there.

But I’d still like to know if I’ll get my flying car.