In the '60s, the best and the brightest were being lured by NASA, to put a man on the Moon. 50 years later, the best and the brightest are being lured by the Silicon Valley, to sell ads on social media. Biggest anticlimax ever.
That might sound bad, but selling adds on social media is actually more useful for society as a hole and takes a lower percent of our GDP than the moon missions. As to cool tech, we are actually discovering earth sized planets orbiting other stars, that's IMO far more interesting that having people play golf on the moon and a lot harder. We are also getting ever closer to building things at the atomic scale. As well as consumer robots be they roomba's or self driving cars.
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In the '60s, the best and the brightest were being lured by NASA, to put a man on the Moon. 50 years later, the best and the brightest are being lured by the Silicon Valley, to sell ads on social media. Biggest anticlimax ever.