"If you go dark, the world goes dark."

[alfreda89]

America's DNA

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Published: June 1, 2005

"A few years ago my youngest daughter participated in the National History Day program for eighth graders. The question that year was "turning points" in history, and schoolchildren across the land were invited to submit a research project that illuminated any turning point in history. My daughter's project was "How Sputnik Led to the Internet." It traced how we reacted to the Russian launch of Sputnik by better networking our scientific research centers and how those early, crude networks spread and eventually were woven into the Internet. The subtext was how our reaction to one turning point unintentionally triggered another decades later.

I worry that 20 years from now some eighth grader will be doing her National History Day project on how America's reaction to 9/11 unintentionally led to an erosion of core elements of American identity."

NYT, so read soon...

Comments

[mouser.livejournal.com]

20 years from now we WILL see dramatic changes - but I don't know that they will be. They might well be a reversal - a backlash against what's happening now.

One can hope. As long as one works while one hopes.

[alfreda89.livejournal.com]

Agreed.

I remember my Ex once asked me what I thought the most important invention of the 1970s had been, and I said "The microwave." He almost wrecked the car. "How did you know that?" Obviously, there was a list somewhere.

Because I watched my mother start thawing things hours ahead, or start food prep 90 minutes before we ate at 6:00 pm. The microwave changed everything for whomever was home holding down the fort--and made working women able to feed their families more than a pick-me- up dinner.

If we could predict the change, we'd be millionaires. But change will come. I work and pray for good change.