A Prescient Note from Carl Sagan

I'm currently listening to an old audio book recording of Carl Sagan's "The Demon Haunted World". It's a bit distracting listening to a book at work -- to say nothing of the poor sound quality of the transfer and prompts to flip over the long since eschewed tape.

My father and I had recently discussed how our nation doesn't seem to produce much of anything any more. Much of the economy is now service and information based. Accordingly, the following excerpt of the book leapt out at me:

"I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time -- when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness.

The dumbing down of American is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudo-science and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance... The plain lesson is that study and learning -- not just of science, but of anything -- are avoidable, even undesirable.

We've arranged a global civilization in which most crucial elements -- transportation, communications, and all other industries; agriculture, medicine, education, entertainment, protecting the environment; and even the key democratic institution of voting -- profoundly depend on science and technology. We have also arranged things so that no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture if ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces."

-Carl Sagan
1995