Tuesday was a sad day. Arthur C. Clarke died at the age of 90. It is fitting that the news of the past week has revolved around the future of space exploration. Clarke, like many other science fiction authors, sowed the seeds of space travel in many of our imaginations. In that time these stories of space exploration were many times larger then life—they could never have been believed beyond the realm of imagination.

Now we are faced with a different form of exploration, that of the micro world—where molecules, cellular structures, and man-made nanotechnology are the new frontier. These advances, though important, cannot be shared on a social or cultural level as much as landing a human on the moon; nor would I expect that children lie at wake at night and dream of the structural folds of mitochondria.

Looking back through historical tidbits posted on YouTube, it is hard to compare our time with the heyday of space exploration. The 1960s were a time of confidence, of literally high-flying ideals, blunt policies (for good and for bad), and brute force engineering.

Humans did not tread as lightly through life as we do now.

Now, the safety of our explorers is fret over until we’ve ultimately removed all adventure, and dare I say sexiness, from one of the core human instincts: to see what’s over the next hill.Today we are anxious about being safe, at great cost to ourselves personally and culturally. We exchange experiences for risklessness; this in my mind is the pragmatic approach and it has dispelled the age of optimism. In so doing we’ve also placed the idea of predictive response at the forefront of our lives. We’ve become defensive drivers through and through.

This approach has further removed our acceptance of big ideas and imagination, which in my mind, go hand-in-hand with optimism. I may be echoing much of the discussion from the Walrus article by Bruce Mau, but this is something that as he put it, “got under my skin until it became an itch I had to scratch.” We’ve become paralyzed with the fear. All we see are the costs of discovery regardless of the opportunity lost by being guarded.

What is the cost of optimism? Better yet, what are the benefits of optimism?

It is common-stated economic truism that during the World Cup economic activity decreases because the majority of the population is ‘busy’ watching. However something magical happens to the economy of the winning nation: productivity increases, GDP increases, prosperity reigns.

Would the effect be any different if the human race reached out to the stars again?

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Posted on Thursday, March 20th, 2008 at 9:02 am. Follow comments through the RSS 2.0 feed. Comment or trackback.