from: octimotor

I, too, judge that Neal Stephenson may be on to something important.

Taras W. circulated to members on an e-mail list the excerpt and web link to N.S. article. His intent was to use the info simply as another point from which to criticize the entitlements programs part of federal budget.

But perhaps the article indicates a rather more worrisome social condition rather than just the usual USA partisan politics slogans exchanges.

During one of his Coast to Coast talk show interviews, Richard Hogland expressed a reaction similar to N.S. regarding the April – July 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill. It goes to show, said R.H., this is the kind of thing which happens when tech development investments such as NASA research goes neglected for decades. Then when trouble comes, the needed tools to fix your technical problem will be unavailable, as a result of that long neglect.

His observations apply to what is the state of openly acknowledged and published sci/tech. Those who look can come across certain allegations which assert much more tech has been perfected – – at substantial expense – – but for various covert soceo-economic engineering or military rationals remains not publicly available.

Howard Bloom said “A nation that looks up, goes up; a nation that looks down goes down. A nation without a sense of a new frontier begins to cave in upon itself…nations make their own resources by opening up radical new frontiers,” He was one of the space round table show guests in May 2010 on Coast to Coast radio show.

In parallel to this, consider comments by attorney William Pepper. He is author of _An act of State_ and _Orders to Kill_ . (These document his investigations of the 1968 Martin Luther King & Robert Kenedy killings.) His opinion was given In an April 2011 interview by Kerry Casity on “Whistle blower radio”. The USA, he stated, is becoming a two class society, without a remaining middle class – – a pre-revolution state. The top 1% own 40% of the society’s wealth. The conventional avenues for seeking to redress grievances are proving to be ineffective. That leaves open instead prospects for radical upheavals.

– – – – – – – – – – –

from Taras W.
subject Neal Stephenson: “Innovation Starvation”

“My lifespan encompasses the era when the United States of America was capable of launching human beings into space. Some of my earliest memories are of sitting on a braided rug before a hulking black-and-white television, watching the early Gemini missions. This summer, at the age of 51 – not even old – I watched on a flatscreen as the last Space Shuttle lifted off the pad. I have followed the dwindling of the space program with sadness, even bitterness. Where’s my donut-shaped space station? Where’s my ticket to Mars? …

“I worry that our inability to match the achievements of the 1960s space program might be symptomatic of a general failure of our society to get big things done.

“The Deepwater Horizon oil spill of 2010 crystallized my feeling that we have lost our ability to get important things done. …” — Neal Stephenson —

http://www.worldpolicy.org/journal/fall2011/innovation-starvation

(I note that the 1960s were when entitlement programs began to eat up the Federal budget. Gradually, everything else gets squeezed out.

–TW)