Every decade has a dream

This week's Mad Men finishes with Don Draper trying to get his head around The Beatles Tomorrow Never Knows. "I was raised in the thirties," he says. "My dream was indoor plumbing."

I don't usually think decades can be summarised so neatly but this line seems about right. In the forties they must have dreamed of peace and all that could flow from it. In the fifties they dreamed of comfort. In the sixties my generation at least dreamed of pop music. In the seventies we dreamed of a glamorous past. In the eighties we stopped dreaming of things because we discovered they could be had on credit. In the 90s we dreamed of technology. In the noughties we stopped dreaming of technology because we suddenly had it all.

Now we dream of being able to afford it.