The image of the future as an indicator of the present

The article shows the nature of both fear of the future and hope that it will solve all the problems of the present. The reasons for people's appeal to images of the future are revealed and the ways of the emergence of futurology as a science are shown. The options for seeing the future in works of world literature and cinema, as well as in such objects of mass culture as postcards are presented. The psychological mechanism of the influence of symbols of the future on the present and the dependence of the selection of these symbols on the elements that dominate in the political and cultural code at the time of constructing the picture of the future are analyzed.