[Ninjalawyer]

Meh, saying there's a potential for a bright future is hardly unrealistic. Stephen Pinker's latest book describes (quite convincingly) how worldwide violence is declining and has, in fact, been on the decline for over a hundred years; books like "Abundance" and even Kurzweill's "The Singularity is Near" describe bright futures made possible by disruptive technologies and an accelerating pace of technological development.

So far, neither the utopias nor the dystopias predicted by science fiction or pop science have come to pass. That said though, my favourite scifi books take place in dystopias (Canticle for Leibowitz, 1984, etc.); misery makes for a more interesting read.