Adventures in the Future
Tim Hanrahan and Jason Fry wrote a Requiem for the Future on the Wall Street Journal Online today. They asked the question where are the interplanetary wonders a generation ago read and dreamed about? We've all been exposed, one way or another to science fiction tales from Star Trek to Arthur C. Clarke, and we remember JFK promising the moon and the challenges of the Cold War sent two nations competing for a spot in space.
What a wonderful world and exciting and seductive space is and when they pessimistically point out that when Discovery returned home, we thanked heaven it was in one piece and cheered that an astronaut pulled tiny piece of cloth off its shields that may or may not have caused it to go the way of its predecessor flight. Where are the dazzling starships and moon bases? Where are the planetary ships to Mars? When compared to those wonders a generation gave us, Hanrahan and Fry have a right to be disillusioned.
What a wonderful world and exciting and seductive space is and when they pessimistically point out that when Discovery returned home, we thanked heaven it was in one piece and cheered that an astronaut pulled tiny piece of cloth off its shields that may or may not have caused it to go the way of its predecessor flight. Where are the dazzling starships and moon bases? Where are the planetary ships to Mars? When compared to those wonders a generation gave us, Hanrahan and Fry have a right to be disillusioned.
In the last thirty years, we have seen the rapid expansion of human capability that people living a mere fifty years before this generation would find magical and stand at awe. We can talk to anybody across the planet without wires, that a century ago was merely invented and would find simply impossible. Children today have more computing power in their toys than this generation had learning on the first IBM or Mac Computers a mere ten years ago or twenty years ago with the most powerful of supercomputers that filled a room. Rightly, Hanrahan and Fry observed we have made such strides--- we can not live without our instant messaging, PayPal, ATMs, Google, Bittorrent and iTunes and we structured our lives around our world.
And our global village was made smaller when we sent Communications Satellites into space as much as because of research made during the Cold War.
Today, these technologies are pointing us to make strides in nano technology, in biotechnology, in genetics research, hoping to create new frontiers, to expand our understanding of ourselves, of the world we live in.
It is a poignant thought though that we don't have rovers crossing Luna's craters, or humans ourselves orbiting Mars. It is such a shame that the idealism of a generation before this has failed our human enterprise's to explore the stars.
Though there is much jadedness in the leaders of today's promises to continue on with the future, how can we not when a half-built-over-budget and much delayed space station will probably fall apart even before we can complete it is doing is just up in the air? We must have hope.
The human race's great advances and finest adventures have all been the quest by a few good men and women, with the will to dream and triumph against impossible odds. We spread across this planet because of it, since the dawn of our civilization, 150,000 years ago (scientists tell us today). We have discovered our technological wonders because it is in our nature to be curious, from our discovery of fire, to Newton's Curie's and Einstein's (and many others') inquisitive natures. We have created our civilization because there were such Faiths like Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and many other beliefs and philosophers like Socrates, Aristotle, Plato, Kant and so many others. And in every endeavor, the generation after them have built on the ideas and accomplishments that came before.
Today, we see our society evolve and transform itself as consumers become producers as innovations such as podcasting, blogging, open source, computing grids, recreate the way we live our lives.
In the near future, many more things we can not imagine today will reshape the way we live our lives, hopefully for the better. We will have discover better protocols for cancer care. In that time, wouldn't it be a great way to think, to hope we have made better strides in health care? In fifteen years, would it be idealistic to hope, we have minimized if not totally solved our energy problems, of terrorism, and online identity theft and many others.
Perhaps it may be too much to hope for, but the nobility of the human race has always been because of strife.
How did we create the Internet? When individuals built it and used it the way they want to. Just as every human endeavor has made technology feasible throughout history and we will do so again with Space Travel, with nano technology, biotechnology and all the other things we are just now thinking about.
In fifteen years, the generation then will still worry about how to send their kids to university. They will still worry about paying bills, and still talk about the celebrities of the day and how the generation today had it better off. And we may see a world that will seem magical and surprising for us living today. Isn't that exciting?
Will we see space craft crossing the distance between Luna and Terra? Will we finally see explorers--- human conquering the stars? My answer is simple. What do we humans do best? We dream, we hope and we explore and we dare conquer what is over the next horizon.
And our global village was made smaller when we sent Communications Satellites into space as much as because of research made during the Cold War.
Today, these technologies are pointing us to make strides in nano technology, in biotechnology, in genetics research, hoping to create new frontiers, to expand our understanding of ourselves, of the world we live in.
It is a poignant thought though that we don't have rovers crossing Luna's craters, or humans ourselves orbiting Mars. It is such a shame that the idealism of a generation before this has failed our human enterprise's to explore the stars.
Though there is much jadedness in the leaders of today's promises to continue on with the future, how can we not when a half-built-over-budget and much delayed space station will probably fall apart even before we can complete it is doing is just up in the air? We must have hope.
The human race's great advances and finest adventures have all been the quest by a few good men and women, with the will to dream and triumph against impossible odds. We spread across this planet because of it, since the dawn of our civilization, 150,000 years ago (scientists tell us today). We have discovered our technological wonders because it is in our nature to be curious, from our discovery of fire, to Newton's Curie's and Einstein's (and many others') inquisitive natures. We have created our civilization because there were such Faiths like Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and many other beliefs and philosophers like Socrates, Aristotle, Plato, Kant and so many others. And in every endeavor, the generation after them have built on the ideas and accomplishments that came before.
Today, we see our society evolve and transform itself as consumers become producers as innovations such as podcasting, blogging, open source, computing grids, recreate the way we live our lives.
In the near future, many more things we can not imagine today will reshape the way we live our lives, hopefully for the better. We will have discover better protocols for cancer care. In that time, wouldn't it be a great way to think, to hope we have made better strides in health care? In fifteen years, would it be idealistic to hope, we have minimized if not totally solved our energy problems, of terrorism, and online identity theft and many others.
Perhaps it may be too much to hope for, but the nobility of the human race has always been because of strife.
How did we create the Internet? When individuals built it and used it the way they want to. Just as every human endeavor has made technology feasible throughout history and we will do so again with Space Travel, with nano technology, biotechnology and all the other things we are just now thinking about.
In fifteen years, the generation then will still worry about how to send their kids to university. They will still worry about paying bills, and still talk about the celebrities of the day and how the generation today had it better off. And we may see a world that will seem magical and surprising for us living today. Isn't that exciting?
Will we see space craft crossing the distance between Luna and Terra? Will we finally see explorers--- human conquering the stars? My answer is simple. What do we humans do best? We dream, we hope and we explore and we dare conquer what is over the next horizon.
posted by Cocoy at
Tuesday, August 16, 2005
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