Jason Silva highlights the human tendency to keep moving forward, out of the trees, out of the caves, and eventually out of this planet.
Exposing a curious mind to astronomy opens up a world of possibilities that influences progressive thinking. The desire to explore space and the infinite unknown creates a shift in values from self preservation toward universal expansion.
What the space age was seeking all along was not so much an expansion of physical space as an expansion of mind.
When we dream of space, we dream of transcendence, we dream of what we might become.
Everything that we are, that distinguishes us from chimps, emerges from that one percent difference in DNA. It has to, ’cause that’s the difference. The Hubble telescope, these grand… that’s in that one percent.
Maybe… everything that we are that is not the chimp is not as smart compared to the chimp as we tell ourselves it is.
Maybe the difference between constructing and launching a Hubble telescope, and a chimp combining two finger motions as sign language – maybe that difference is not all that great. We tell ourselves it is.
Just the same way we label our books optical illusions. We tell ourselves it’s a lot. Maybe it’s almost nothing. How would we decide that?
Imagine another life form that’s one percent different from us.
In the direction that we are different from the chimp.
Think about that.
We have one percent difference and we’re building the Hubble telescope. Go another one percent.
What are we to they? We would be drooling, blithering idiots in their presence. That’s what we would be.
The intention of the Penny 4 NASA project is to stress the importance of advancing the space frontier and is focused on igniting scientific curiosity in the general public.
Neil deGrasse Tyson – We Stopped Dreaming
Spending Resources in the Wrong Places
I’m tired of saying this but I have to say it again! The NASA budget is 4/10’s of one penny on a tax dollar. If I held up a tax dollar and I cut horizontally into it 4/10’s of 1% of its width, it doesn’t even get you into the ink! SO I WILL NOT ACCEPT A STATEMENT THAT SAYS “WE CAN”T AFFORD IT!”
Do you realize that the 850 billion dollar bank bailout, that sum of money is greater than the entire 50 year running budget of NASA. And so when somebody says we don’t have enough money for the space program I’m asking its not that you don’t have enough money , its that the distribution of money your spending is warped, in some way that your removing the only thing that gives people something to dream about tomorrow, the home of tomorrow, the city of tomorrow, the transportation of tomorrow, all that ended in the 1970’s after we stopped going to the moon, it all ended, we stopped dreaming. So, I worry that the decisions that congress make doesn’t factor in the consequences of those decisions on tomorrow. They’re playing for the quarterly report, they’re playing for the next election cycle and that is mortgaging the actual future of this nation, tomorrows gone.
Neil deGrasse Tyson – A New Perspective
Dissolving Our Artificial Boundaries
Photo of Earth. Rising over the lunar landscape. Earthrise over the moon. There was Earth. Seen not as the mapmaker would have you identify it. No. The countries were not color coded with boundaries. It was seen as nature intended it to be viewed. Oceans. Land. Clouds.
We went to the moon and we discovered Earth! I claim we discovered Earth. For the first time. How does that affect culture? I got a list! The instance that photo comes out, that is the identifying cover picture of the whole Earth catalog. Thinking of Earth as a whole. Not as a place where nations war. As a whole.
Back in 1974 Jacque Fresco was told he was a man before his time. Observe this Larry King interview and see for yourself. See that he is not a man before his time but a man trying to change the social culture of his time (and for good reason).
This is a new science: socio-cyberneering. And this is its inventor, the extraordinary Jacque Fresco. He’s my guest this weekend on News Weekend. My guest is an extraordinary Miamian: Dr. Jacque Fresco. I could go through all the things that Dr. Fresco has done. He’s a social engineer, industrial engineer, designer, inventor, was a consultant for Rotorcraft Helicopter, Director of Scientific Research Laboratories, Los Angeles, designed and copyrighted various items, ranging from drafting instruments to X-ray units, has had works published in the Architectural Record, Popular Mechanics, Saturday Review, and has been a technical and psychological consultant to the motion picture industry, member of the Air Force design and development unit at Wright Field, developed the electrostatic anti-icing systems, designed prefabricated aluminum houses.
