Whatever it is, it feels authentic and hopeful. I love the sense of optimism that the graphics (and history shared in this article) invokes. Great stuff.
There is also that the designer seems to really empathize with the message. It's hard to find material nowadays that even has a message, the designer empathizing with it is really rare.
Basic etiquette was better. Well-read people like Carl Sagan were listened to. People could have a modicum of respect in their communities as simple professionals like teachers/architects/doctors/lawyers/etc. Children were allowed to be children. We had movies like The Goonies, which illustrated the ills of society (like unrestrained real estate development) and provided a counterculture message of hope.
I'm in danger of straying into the rise of fear-based dystopia post-2000 so I'll leave it at that. I think that we can get back to the optimism of past decades, but it requires looking past the superficial and understanding that real prosperity is more about opportunity and a feeling that we're all equal and helping to build a better world together.
That rise happened in the 90s, if not earlier. Remember the sensationalism about people getting killed because of Y2K bugs?
No, the 90s was a quiet time for everyone west of Yugoslavia and north of the Mediterranean. The "end of history" between the fall of the Berlin Wall and the fall of the World Trade Center.
I sometimes think we don't do futurism any more because we spent so much effort looking forward to the future of 2000, and there's no big date to look forward to quite like it.
Sometimes looking at 1920-30s High Modernist design, it suggests that "new dawn" in human affairs, the sort of confidence people used to have in science triumphing over superstition ;)
With the exception of the planes that all seem to be careening out of control...