We are so utterly immersed in our cyber-enhanced world that it can be hard to properly understand the context surrounding the historic event of forty years ago today, so thoroughly does our current world view skew our perception of the word “technology”. To put things in proper perspective, the total computational power involved in the Apollo mission to the Moon was far less than the computing power contained in your cell phone.<\/p>\n
When JFK launched his grand challenge to put a man on the Moon and bring him safely back before the decade was out, not even five years had elapsed since the first simple integrated circuit had been demonstrated in a laboratory. Telephones did not have computers in them. Nor did cars, ovens, toys, hotel doors, stereos, or the myriad other objects in one’s daily life.<\/p>\n
Yes, there was already a fantasy of a technological future – the Jetsons come to mind – but that was more of a physical<\/i> fantasy than a cybernetic one. The coolest thing about the Jetsons was their flying car – a natural extension of post-war America’s extended love affair with the automobile, and a collective cultural desire that dates back to Henry Ford in 1908.<\/p>\n
Similarly George Jetson’s robotic housekeeper Rosie was not portrayed as a marvel of artificial intelligence, but rather as a thinly disguised gloss on the 1950s TV character Hazel – a smart-alecky blue collar housekeeper engaged in perpetual affectionate class warfare with her boss, the upwardly mobile suburbanite George Baxter. The only thing that really distinguished Rosie from Hazel was the way she managed to zoom around the house while balancing on what looked like a single tiny roller skate. Again, a celebration of mechanical innovation, not cybernetic advancement.<\/p>\n
In other words, the world of the 1960s was still focused on the physical world as the ultimate measure of technological advancement – buildings that were the highest ever, weapons more explosive than any ever built before, jet planes and submarines and automobiles that broke all previous speed records. The most celebrated superhero was still Superman – that master of the physical, celebrated for his unparalleled strength, speed, ability to fly, even X-ray vision. The technological focus of the 1960s was, in essential ways, an extension of the Victorian, with its trains running ever faster, huge steamships sailing across the globe, mighty cities built with ever newer and stronger materials and methods of manufacture – not to mention those X-rays (first discovered in 1875).<\/p>\n
In an important way, that first footstep on the Moon was the paramount expression of the Victorian dream – a fantasy come true for anyone who grew up reading Jules Verne, H.G. Welles or Hugo Gernsback. Humans could truly say that they had passed the ultimate physical test – they had shown they could break the bonds that tied our species down to mother Earth.<\/p>\n
But once having proved this, there was nowhere else to go. In a sense, the Moon landing was a death knell for such Victorian era dreams. What appeal could a mere train or jet plane or tall building hold for a species that had walked upon another heavenly body? What had been mere hopeful fantasy and speculation from the time of the ancient Greeks – and earlier – was now cold hard fact.<\/p>\n
Sure, we could go on to Mars and beyond, but there was no longer any mystery as to whether such a feat was possible. Once human footsteps had touched the surface of the Moon, we knew in our heart of hearts that we could find a way to walk upon the planets.<\/p>\n
And so in the four decades that have followed, our culture’s yearnings for technological transcendence have gradually turned 180o<\/sup>, from outward to inward. Our technological desire has focused less on extending the body, and more on extending the brain. When Neil Armstrong took his first step upon the Moon, forty years ago today, he became the last Victorian hero – the final iconic expression of a world now gone.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" We are so utterly immersed in our cyber-enhanced world that it can be hard to properly understand the context surrounding the historic event of forty years ago today, so thoroughly does our current world view skew our perception of the word “technology”. To put things in proper perspective, the total computational power involved in the … Continue reading “The last Victorian”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1725"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1725"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1725\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1730,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1725\/revisions\/1730"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1725"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1725"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1725"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}