In Japan, today is Monday, August 7, 2003. A day that is significant for a couple of reasons.

Today is the first day of the school year. It is also the first day of the business or fiscal year. (Maybe it makes more sense to start things like education and business when the world itself seems to be in a state of rebirth and bloom, rather than in September's final days of warmth or October's cold. But I digress.)

It's also the day that Astro Boy was supposed to be activated. Do you remember Astro Boy? A cartoon about a robot boy with rocket feet and a jet-age, futuristic hairstyle? First written in the 50's by Osamu Tezuka, Astro Boy was a story about human nature and the possibilities of technology. In a world threatened by evil run amok, Astro Boy was a mechanized force for justice, kindness and innocence. And this story was so widely embraced by Japan that Astro Boy's "birthday" is being commemorated all month with parties, sales, stamps, toys, television specials about comics, robotics and technology, and of course, a new Astro Boy cartoon.

The only comparisons I could think of from America were August 4, 1997, the day that Skynet (the computer that would create Arnold Schwartzenneger's "Terminator") was supposed to come on-line, and January 12, 1992, the day that HAL 9000 (of Clarke and Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey") was supposed to have been activated.

While I'm not sad to have missed the devastation of mankind by a berserk computer, I do have to ask a few questions:

Why does Japan still seem to believe that technology can be used to save humanity, while America seems to be ready to (ideologically) abandon the future for the pastoral embrace of the "The Lord of The Rings?" There's no end of stories here about people using their wits and their machines to fight for justice. But from Tolkien to "Minority Report," heroes seem to have to abandon his tech and rely on his wits, muscles or innate humanity to fight the systems of machines, cruelty and evil.

Do you believe in technology's potential to improve human life? Do you believe in technology at all? I mean, in the way some people believe in horoscopes, UFOs or god? Do you have faith that it works?

And this is 2003, where the hell are all the flying cars, space age fashions and wise-cracking robots? I feel severely let down that the best we can do is that stupid Aibo robot dog.

Dammit, where's all the Fem-Bots?

Anyway, happy birthday, Astro Boy.