We all have theories about what the future might look like. But what did the future look like in the past? And how have the advent of new technologies altered how people viewed the future? We talked with curator of modern sciences and historian of Victorian science Dr Joshua Nall, professor of Digital Humanities and director of Cambridge Digital Humanities Professor Caroline Bassett, and Junior Research Fellow in the history of artificial intelligence Dr Jonnie Penn in our attempt to understand how the future was thought of in the past. Along the way we discussed utopias and dystopias, the long history of science fiction, and how the future might come back to haunt us!