I don’t know how many of you remember back in the 20th century how TV and movies represented our world. This was going to be the golden age of super computers on your wrist, medical miracles, and colonizing other worlds.

In Star Trek Dr. Mccoy could wave a salt shaker size device over you and cure brain contusions, mend broken bones, and what ever else ailed you. In the movie 2001 Space Odyssey we already had a moon base and started exploring mars and beyond.

I could go on ad infinitum. Well it seems that back in the 50s, 60s and 70s the human race was starving for what technology could bring. So when our governments wanted to spend monies on research and development nobody complained. In fact it was encouraged. We had a few successes. We not only sent men to the moon but did it many times. We needed to exchange data between universities and between governments. So we invented ARPANET, which eventually became the World Wide Web (WWW) aka the Internet.

Once we had a few of these hurdles overcome we started to complain about how expensive all this R&D was. Our government started cutting back on space programs and basic technology research.

So now we find ourselves in a situation where current “innovations” are more case of feeding off of previous success and not original thought. We can make a processor just a little bit faster. We can put more of them on a computer. But in actuality the base circuits are no faster than 10 years ago. Cellphone technology has almost come to a standstill, at least in the U.S. We are easily 10 years behind Europe.

We are just reshuffling the cards that were dealt to us 20 years ago.

We have to wake up from our daze and self congratulations and get serious about research.

There are a whole slew of real projects just waiting for funding. Fusion for power, ion engines for interplanetary space flight. Men not only visiting the moon but moving in. Basic biology, to further understand exactly how our bodies work. All were doing now is guesswork. (and there are signed that we are actually starting to more damage than good)

If humanity wants to make it to the 22nd century we need to get off of our backsides and get to work. Taking chances is what got us here. Playing it safe is just a slow death.