Whilst cycling in I often have strange wandering thoughts and this morning’s cycle was no exception.. I thought..
Where’s the scientific and technological magic these days?
In the 60’s ’til the mid-70’s it was the space race and nuclear physics.
In the late 70’s to the late 80’s it was computers and space probes such as Voyager, Guiotto etc.
In the mid 90’s was the Internet and the mobile phone (in popular culture).
Today,
there seem to be only minor improvements coming along, no breakthrough science,
no knowledge expanding space probes. There’s no magical gosh! wow! things
coming up, it’s all old hat.
A great deal of the cause of the lack
of discovery etc., in my opinion, is caused by governments and people becoming
far too cautious and penny pinching only “investing” in the short term and
short sighted.
The Human Genome Project?
Cloning technology?
Hmm.. neither of those are the big *OUT THERE* explorations of science and technology.
The genome project is just a trudge along a well worn path which has been going on for decades in some form or another.. and a whole load of politics. It’s not very visible other than from a few news stories which are mostly errant. The added worry of patenting of the genome is also giving this a bad name and scaring people.
Cloning isn’t THAT exciting. Again, it’s little science, it’s not a big vision. In fact it’s more of something most people think of as fearful, similar to the current view of genetic modification. (And on the later subject, I see their point with the current scarily dangerous methods. When they can precisely cut and paste DNA I’ll think differently.)