On the 50th Anniversary of Sputnik

[ysobelle]

Leo: My generation never got the future it was promised... Thirty-five years later, cars, air travel is exactly the same. We don't even have the Concorde anymore. Technology stopped.
Josh: The personal computer...
Leo: A more efficient delivery system for gossip and pornography? Where's my jet pack, my colonies on the Moon?

Comments

[surlywench.livejournal.com]

It didn't stop...it just began to focus almost exclusively on internal biological processes that will become essential once we start trying to colonize the moon..or send men to Mars....

and the concorde...yeah it was cool...but what was the point? that businessmen could fly around the world in nearly no time? We have video conferencing and satellite links for that kind of thing now, right?

and in those thirty-five years, car and air travel may have stayed the same, but the unbelievable leaps of medical science are surely of more lasting value than a personal jet-pack, ffs!

[ysobelle.livejournal.com]

Down, girl. It's a West Wing quote.


See you tonight, yes?

[surlywench.livejournal.com]

yeah, i know that, but it's still making my tail all fluffy.

:points at tail:

YOU SEE?!?! ALL FLUFFED.

it'll take *hours* to get the fur back down :(((((((


_hours_

[surlywench.livejournal.com]

oh, and yes, tonite prolly around....10ish? until the sun comes up, or one of us dies of exhaustion. My assumption is that I'm bringing just the peacock and then working on everything else you have at your place? I'm still working on approval for monday nite, but I can bring the map, the blue and the toile then. Did I get that right? I dont know what it is about the map fabric but whenever i go to cut the stomacher, my brain goes bendy. Happened last time too. Bendy brain feels funny....

[ysobelle.livejournal.com]

Whee! Bring your machine, baby.

[fondor.livejournal.com]

But the leaps of medical science aren't there. We have a larger percentage of the population affected by cancer than ever. More and more of the medical advances are cosmetic. I'd much rather be in space with a 60 year life span than happy, fat and stupid on my couch with my xbox.

[ysobelle.livejournal.com]

Why not in space with a 90-year lifespan?

And I think we're helping more people with cancer survive, but more and more things keep causing more and more cases.

[hennabee.livejournal.com]

Ahh...nostalgia. I remember that episode.

Personally I would rather have my Xbox in space without cancer. If that can be worked, I will consider our society technologically advanced. Who needs flying cars anyway? It's a waste of fossil fuels. As was already mentioned...we have teleconferencing! That saves so much time and energy we can put that elsewhere. The internet saves trees these days (sort of) with electronic billing.

And as for cancer...bigger population means more cases in general, but I think we're so ignorant of what poisons our bodies and souls that we don't understand the twinky at the Quicky Mart causes just enough of a shift to get one cell thinking "You know...I feel like attacking my neighbor today...."

But really...

[deathwardegg.livejournal.com]

Why are we not transgenic organisms by now? That is, why aren't we engineered to be unusually strong, beautiful, or resistant to contagion? Frankly, I'd like to be (or my offspring to be) immune to tooth decay, cancer, obesity, etc....

Philip K. Dick's "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" (published in 1968) takes place in 1992 -- and Arthur Clarke's "2001: A Space Odyssey" (also from 1968) notes that HAL 9000's birthday was also in 1992. I looked forward to those dates as a child, and have been sorely disappointed, by the lack of both engineered organisms, and artificial intelligence.