Watching the Super Bowl last weekend, I was reminded of our preoccupation with technology. Six high tech cameras were used to film the action, the game was broadcast online in 10 different languages and the halftime show stage lights were almost amazing enough to make me forget about The Who's lethargic performance.
Indeed, the recession does not seem to have dampened the technological output of recent months. The Apple iPad was released recently to considerable media attention. Technologies like SixthSense, a sort of wearable computer that projects its interface onto common surfaces, still show up regularly in the news.
Now, I'm no science nut. I prefer ethical theory to string theory and Biology 11 dashed any desire of mine to pursue science in an academic setting. But when someone draws a watch on his wrist and then the time is projected onto it, as SixthSense enables you to do, it is hard not to be amazed. The feelings of wonder and possibility one gets after hearing about the latest scientific breakthrough are familiar to us all, and have inspired countless poems, stories and movies.
Not everybody shares this poetic outlook, however. In his Feb. 3 column, Sam Buntz '11 expressed his agreement with President Barack Obama's decisions to scrap NASA's plans for another manned mission to the moon ("Blue Moon"). Buntz and others argue that science can cheapen what it examines. Some things deserve to simply be marveled at, the argument goes; to dissect and examine something as admired as the moon is to ruin its majesty.
I don't object to this viewpoint because it's soft or because I think science holds all the answers. I object because it flies in the face of human experience. People have always been interested in science and discovery. Even more than that, though, we have always had a need for adventure; we need to be in pursuit of something for survival's sake.
Our whole history, from our politics to our literature, is marked by the quest for progress. Even in good times, politicians cannot be elected without promising to bring some sort of change. Quixote could not live solely in his books, and Gatsby was not content to just stare at his green light. We admire heroes because they pursued an ideal and did not allow themselves to grow comfortable in their situations.
This is part of why science is so necessary. In a culture that is marked by apathy and self-centeredness, it is refreshing to walk into a lab and see people engaged in the thankless pursuit of an ideal. Most scientists may traffic in obscurity for their entire careers, but they still throw themselves into a noble cause. The existence of their efforts has some intrinsic value to us all.
It is easy to see why people would be opposed to exploration or technological progress; our modern world, in which everything from athletics to relationships to human emotion is boiled down to its scientific elements, seems to provide little support for the romantic or the dreamer. On the whole, though, I would argue that science has done a lot more good than bad. The Internet and communications technologies have made racism and xenophobia much rarer. People are able to live happier, healthier and more productive lives now that they don't have to focus on growing food for themselves.
Space exploration is one of the few things that can knock us off our materialist high horses and make us think about a world outside of our own. If technology has corrupted our morals in any way, it has more to do with our own weaknesses than something inherent in the nature of scientific progress.
I'm not saying that there aren't limits to science. The ethics of stem cell research are still debated. Our government should not be researching the next super-weapon if it is not necessary for our safety. But in a world where all the mountains have been climbed, where Quixote would have been locked up for schizophrenia and Gatsby would probably be considered a creep, science is the closest thing we have to true adventure. To use Buntz's imagery, I already know that the moon is merely a rock that controls the tides. It is when I hear that we are planning to build a base there that my imagination truly gets going.
