Re:The Size of the Human Radio-Broadcast Bubble in the Milky...
by brc on Sunday February 06, 2011 @10:15PM
(#2187407)
I'm not going to disagree with your general points, but I will say one thing. The reason no large governmental projects have taken place is because the idea is not compelling.
The push for the moon was extraordinarily costly - but an entire nation, the richest on earth at the time, was behind it. It was a national effort, a calling together of an entire people, a lining up of all effort and a relative lack of detractors.
There are plenty of prior examples of this type of cohesive effort - Britain in World War 2 springs to mind. But many others in prior history as well.
Therefore I would say the lack of decade-spanning effort is not because people now are different, there just is a paucity of generational ideas that get everyone excited. If something falls down on a partisan basis, then it's just not good enough as an idea to unite an entire people. History, after all, is really a long string of dull years punctuated by exciting events.
The LHC may be the last of it's type, but then how many people are really excited about particle physics, no matter how good the possible benefits might be? I would not say our attention span is narrowing, merely reverting to the mean.
The push for the moon was extraordinarily costly - but an entire nation, the richest on earth at the time, was behind it. It was a national effort, a calling together of an entire people, a lining up of all effort and a relative lack of detractors.
There are plenty of prior examples of this type of cohesive effort - Britain in World War 2 springs to mind. But many others in prior history as well.
Therefore I would say the lack of decade-spanning effort is not because people now are different, there just is a paucity of generational ideas that get everyone excited. If something falls down on a partisan basis, then it's just not good enough as an idea to unite an entire people. History, after all, is really a long string of dull years punctuated by exciting events.
The LHC may be the last of it's type, but then how many people are really excited about particle physics, no matter how good the possible benefits might be? I would not say our attention span is narrowing, merely reverting to the mean.