As the space shuttle Atlantis lifted off last week, I couldn’t help but think about the progress technology has made in the past 30 years.
In the bittersweet moment of seeing Atlantis safely off on its final mission — the final mission of the entire space shuttle program — I thought about where games, computers, communications and other technologies were at the time.
The laser disc, the Atari 2600, the IBM TRS-80, the Apple II — these were all late ’70s/early ’80s technologies that were sitting on the cutting edge, promising a breakthrough to a whole new world at the dawn of the information age. Everything was getting smaller, faster and better.
The world itself was shrinking. Even as the shuttle gave us a whole new way to work and explore outer space, we were finding new ways to work and explore inner space. We were able to communicate with the globe in seconds rather than minutes, transmit and transfer large amounts of data for cheaper than ever, and we were doing it with devices that were small enough to fit right in our own homes.
Of course, these days, we’d find such technology embarrassingly inadequate. In fact, it feels cliche to point out how powerful cell phones have become in comparison to those early desktop computers. But just because something is old doesn’t mean it’s bad. Likewise, just because a computer isn’t powerful — by today’s standards — doesn’t mean it’s useless.
While it’s true that the shuttle’s main computer operates on about 1 megabyte of RAM, that’s only because it doesn’t need any more than that. While the number of things that need to be monitored, adjusted and calculated during something as complex as a launch sequence would boggle the mind of the person at the helm of that gargantuan beast, for a computer, all it’s doing is executing a bunch of codes and commands that fit in about the same space as a minute’s worth of music.
To put it another way, it would be almost as embarrassing to look at what exactly we do with our nigh-omnipotent devices. Would you use a big rig, 18-wheel tractor trailer to deliver one letter? When you think about it, using an iPhone to send a text message is about the same thing. The most taxing thing we do with our modern computers is play video games. Think about how trivial and inconsequential that is compared to, say, strapping humans to a few billion dollars worth of parts and shooting them into outer space. Again, it’s kind of embarrassing, but no less amazing.
The things we take for granted — cell phones, GPS, global television broadcasts, satellite radio and even video games — wouldn’t be possible if we didn’t have a space program. We’re essentially wasting our lives away and patting ourselves on the back while not giving any thought to the fact that we wouldn’t have half the conveniences we do today if not for Cold-War technology developed more than half a century ago. They were sending rockets into space; we’re sending virtual birds into imaginary buildings. We’re playing with toys based on the same technology that once developed weapons of mass destruction. Then again, I’m much happier knowing that this is what became of it all; that we decided to play games instead of wiping ourselves out — so far.
I’m taking this moment to pay homage to something wonderful that is quickly fading into history. We remember and learn from the tragic losses, but we are inspired by the astonishing achievements of the past 30 years. Here’s to the future, and what dreams may come.
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