The source for the latest information, news, new products, and opinions about the machining and metalworking industries
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The source for the latest information, news, new products, and opinions about the machining and metalworking industries |
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Scaredy-Cat Nation
Back when I was a kid – in the middle of the last century – the future meant silver clothes, personal jet packs, and flying cars. In fact, flying cars became the measure of the future. Several years ago there was an IBM commercial featuring Avery Brooks, "Hawk" from the "Spenser: For Hire" TV series, and later Capt. Sisko from "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine," where he bemoaned the fact that the 21st Century had arrived, but no flying cars yet. After some thought, and rush-hour experience, I don't think I'd want a society with flying cars. What's now a highway fender-bender would be a catastrophe with flying cars falling on people. As a somewhat sexist aside, image a flying SUV piloted by a soccer mommy yakking on her cell phone. And yes, I'll be spending some time in Hell for that statement, so don't bother to write me about it.
But, short of flying cars, we have become a society more concerned with being safe than being adventurous. Our technology advances bear that out. It's all inward-looking, comfort-making advances. Part of my "job" running this website is to troll news sources to see the advances going on in technology that may have an eventual impact on machining and metalworking. There's not a lot of news in the common zeitgeist about the bold news adventures taking place. Take Google News, for instance. In the Sci/Tech news section for the afternoon of Friday, Nov. 13, the top stories were • Dell to Launch Smartphone in China,
Brazil See what I mean? Where are the Lindberghs, Pearys, Amundsens? The closest we come today are men like Robert Ballard and families like the Rutans. We were in danger of losing the Hubble Space Telescope because of fear. Until the last mission to refurbish it, NASA planned to let the telescope die because there would be no way to rescue the space shuttle crew should there be a problem during the mission. NASA finally took it's courage in hand and sent a mission aloft with a second shuttle on the pad, ready for rescue, should there be difficulties. But, that's an exception. We've become a society so afraid of the world we make kids wear helmets to ride tricycles. We're not challengers of the unknown anymore, we've become a society content to face danger only in video games. "What about the children?! Won't somebody please think of the children!?" to quote Helen Lovejoy from "The Simpsons." Shouldn't we keep children safe? In a psychological study some years ago, two litters of Scottish Terrier puppies were raised in different circumstances. One set was raised normally, and the second set raised without any trauma whatsoever. As adult dogs, the pampered litter would over-react to the slightest hurt. Those raised normally, took such setbacks in stride. It's time we stopped being sissies and started pushing the outer edge of the envelope. Maybe I won't live long enough to have a condo on the moon, but maybe my nephew will if we stop worrying about being overly safe. |
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