Reduction in global inequality? I don't know what you mean.
>Electricity wasn't invented, it was discovered.
Agreed. My mistake. I don't know what the point is with the rest of that section. I was suggesting that the invention of ways to convert electricity to other forms of energy should have looked like magic at that time. With steam engines, at least you can see what is driving the wheel. But when a motor gets driven by just a wire connected to it or a bulb lighting up should have felt like magic at the time....
>I suspect it felt as amazing and futuristic as the first time I connected to a BBS.
I doubt. Once you have electricity carrying signals, it does not seem much more exciting that signals can be used transfer different kinds of data. So all the wonder of Internet does not feel so wonderful that way. It is just a scaled up telephone exchange...nothing more.
> Yes, because I remember the first time I had a video call with my girlfriend when I was on a business trip.
Same thing...
>Yes, because I watched with glee as the Challenger shuttle took off...
People freaked out when they first saw an automobile. No one freaked off when they saw a rocket lifted off. If you want to evoke the same kind of wonder today, I am afraid nothing short of antigravity will do.
> Education in the sciences and the arts is more accessible than at any time in human history, in large part due to the advent of the internet.
Accessible, yes. But the true workhorses of Internet are Porn and Advertising. You say that we have more access to science and arts more than ever. But we also have access to any kind of sick porn, and guess what our new generation of kids are hooked up on? Internet have opened multitudes of new channels to feed never ending Ads that inject insecurities into their minds and make them feel inadequate and make them buy buy and buy more and more stuff that they don't really need.
>Think of all of the great people who will emerge over the next few generations!
Ha ha. From where? From bowels of your smartphone, where their heads are buried? I would be surprised if the future generations will be able to hold a proper conversation face to face without the help of their smartphones to cue them in the right time to start speaking...
> ingenuity and art has drowned our ability to single out greatness?
You mean, there is greatness everywhere? I don't get you. Single out greatness?
> Steve Jobs is and will be one of our contemporary greats; > Mark Zuckerberg is and will be one of our contemporary greats.
Oh my. No comments for this one.
>Whoever gets the credit for colonizing Mars may go down in history as the reason there still is a human species...
No. Going and colonizing Mars or any other world is a short term solution. It is like paying one credit card bill with another credit card. The real solution is to stop/reduce spending when you are short on cash. In this case, that would be to learn to co-exist peacefully without waging the never ending fights/wars for resources, and learn to limit our extravagance so that our home does not go up in flames. And do that without turning the whole lot of human population to complete imbecils.
>do yourself a service by taking some time out to explore what happened to your sense of wonder..
My sense of wonder is just fine. It is just that my imagination hasn't been so dried up that I cannot imagine something more wonderful than a rocket taking off.....