Prescience

"ttyymmnn" (ttyymmnn) 07/30/2019 at 17:05 • Filed to: None

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I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time – when the United St ates is a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness. The dumbing down of America is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30-second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance.

Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World , 1995

For Sweden > ttyymmnn 07/30/2019 at 17:07

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I’m always amazed that people who suffered through malaise-era American cars worried about a future full of imported cars.

“ American manufacturing is dying!” Yes, it is bad.

ttyymmnn > For Sweden 07/30/2019 at 17:12

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And who drives two foreign cars.

For Sweden > ttyymmnn 07/30/2019 at 17:14

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The secret to building good cars is the threat of Trabants on the other side of the fence.

facw > ttyymmnn 07/30/2019 at 17:18

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I went to high school with one of his kids, but I’m pretty sure not that one. In any event he’s pretty right on in that quote.

In any event:

facw > ttyymmnn 07/30/2019 at 17:20

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Note that from the quote I don’t believe he thinks the United States being a service and information economy is  a bad thing, just that it presents different challenges.

RallyWrench > ttyymmnn 07/30/2019 at 17:22

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He was a pretty smart guy. If everyone got familiar with and embraced the Pale Blue Dot quote, we’d be a hell of a lot better off. 

ttyymmnn > facw 07/30/2019 at 17:25

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We never missed an episode of Cosmos when it was first on TV, and we even had an LP of the music from Cosmos . I have Demon-Haunted World on a shelf somewhere. I started reading it a couple of years ago but didn’t get very far. Not sure why, but perhaps because it was too depressing.

On a related note, you may be old enough to remember Alvin Tofler’s Future Shock (1970) . I never read it, but it was a very big thing back in the early to mid -70s when it was published, and I remember being in a class that talked about it . I stumbled across this treatment of the book narrated by Orson Welles. I’m not very far into it yet, but I plan to finish it. It’s a bit cheesy, but it remains topical, and I love the soundtrack and futurist tone to it.

ttyymmnn > facw 07/30/2019 at 17:26

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Right, service and information vis a vis manufacturing.

SilentButNotReallyDeadly...killed by G/O Media > ttyymmnn 07/30/2019 at 19:07

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In hindsight, Sagan’s only mistake in that statement was that he thought he was talking only about America...

MrSnrub > ttyymmnn 07/31/2019 at 00:39

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Prescient indeed.  Sagan clearly partook  of the spice melange