Carl Sagan predictions

General Discussion
1

30 years ago, Carl Sagan predicted what the United States would be like in the future. How accurate is it today?

"I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time — when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the 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…”

~ Carl Sagan in "The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark.

2 Likes
2

He called it. Although, I’ve got to wonder if Sagan would realize how scientific thinking and it’s mentality of progress got us to this point.

3

Science was just the engine, we have been the driver all along.

That such a simple less is so difficult to grasp, astounds.

So, yeah, he nailed it.

So now what?

As an aside, look what I stumbling into, courtesy of the Library of Congress.
https://www.loc.gov/resource/mss85590.004/?st=gallery

All that good advice, that was inspired by the revelations of the 1950s/60s/70s age of terrestrial/geophysical/evolutionary discovery - given lip service and a nod, but when the rubber hit the road it was all ignored. Why?
Muthukrishna has a nice pat answer.

Anything other than greed driven gluttonous endless growth was simply off the table.

Okay, those generations made the decision, now this next generations will be paying the price.

That is simply what it is, no one wants to change anything, and if we wanted to, at this point we wouldn’t know how - man we can’t even hang onto our 250 year old Democracy and government by Rule Of Law for christ sake.
We are strapped in for this ride.

Rockets ships tearing up our atmosphere and then exploding and crashing back down onto Earth, so what, who cares, the price of PROGRESS.
Self driving electrical cars with batteries that can become weapons of terrifying localized catastrophe of fire and brimstone, plowing into property and people, because the cars have blind spots, training errors, glitches, blah, blah, and the batteries are inherently explosively unstable. What could go wrong? The price of PROGRESS, suck it up.
etc.,
etc…

And the talking heads tells us, All hail to the God of Progress, the master of our age.