I love this ad... I laugh just as hard at it now as I did when it first came out.
As a society, our technology has evolved more in the last hundred years than we have in the last thousand years. The role television plays in furthering technology is undeniable. The 60's Star Trek mobile communicators look remarkably like the first versions of flip phones. Many medical revolutions were inspired by movies and futuristic concepts. It's amazing, to me, how the artistic mind of a screenwriter can stimulate the scientific mind of engineer or scientist. The flip side, of course, is when an inspired scientist gives ideas to a screenwriter.
This back and forth movement continues to stimulate our minds and plays an integral part to our continued momentum. I hope to be around for a long time to see what amazing things we come up with next. Who is to say what the future holds? Maybe someone soon will unlock the genetic drift that causes us to age. What if we can, one day, move the marker back and stay 25 forever? The scariest part for me is wondering how we will handle technology in the future. I worry that if our morals stay how they exist now, we will only offer the newest and hottest ideas to the highest paying bidder. If I'm 95 years old one day and a scientist offers me a way to be young and healthy again, but I can't afford it, do I just die? Can we stand idly aside and allow people to perish because they can't contribute enough to a doctors' retirement fund?
I've staged this question in the future and I truly do worry about how we will handle situations like this as they arise... but we face a similar dilemma now. How many hours of debate transpire in Washington over how to treat illegal immigrants in medical emergencies? How many hospitals have closed in the last few years because insurance companies won't pay for the treatment of a human being? How many people are refused a better life because we refuse to add them to our precious society? Our neighbors to the south and across the seas sometimes live in reprehensible circumstances--but we'd rather go to Chili's and eat twenty dollars worth of ribs than consider a hungry family in Mexico. As the planet and humanity evolved, it didn't place borders between our countries; that's a man-made concept. Unfortunately, your life can differ greatly if you're born on one side or the other of about 100 feet.
So where does that put us in a few hundred years? Will we still be cheering our successes while simultaneously scorning our neighbors or are we capable of evolving to some level of equanimity?
I've stopped laughing.
As a society, our technology has evolved more in the last hundred years than we have in the last thousand years. The role television plays in furthering technology is undeniable. The 60's Star Trek mobile communicators look remarkably like the first versions of flip phones. Many medical revolutions were inspired by movies and futuristic concepts. It's amazing, to me, how the artistic mind of a screenwriter can stimulate the scientific mind of engineer or scientist. The flip side, of course, is when an inspired scientist gives ideas to a screenwriter.
This back and forth movement continues to stimulate our minds and plays an integral part to our continued momentum. I hope to be around for a long time to see what amazing things we come up with next. Who is to say what the future holds? Maybe someone soon will unlock the genetic drift that causes us to age. What if we can, one day, move the marker back and stay 25 forever? The scariest part for me is wondering how we will handle technology in the future. I worry that if our morals stay how they exist now, we will only offer the newest and hottest ideas to the highest paying bidder. If I'm 95 years old one day and a scientist offers me a way to be young and healthy again, but I can't afford it, do I just die? Can we stand idly aside and allow people to perish because they can't contribute enough to a doctors' retirement fund?
I've staged this question in the future and I truly do worry about how we will handle situations like this as they arise... but we face a similar dilemma now. How many hours of debate transpire in Washington over how to treat illegal immigrants in medical emergencies? How many hospitals have closed in the last few years because insurance companies won't pay for the treatment of a human being? How many people are refused a better life because we refuse to add them to our precious society? Our neighbors to the south and across the seas sometimes live in reprehensible circumstances--but we'd rather go to Chili's and eat twenty dollars worth of ribs than consider a hungry family in Mexico. As the planet and humanity evolved, it didn't place borders between our countries; that's a man-made concept. Unfortunately, your life can differ greatly if you're born on one side or the other of about 100 feet.
So where does that put us in a few hundred years? Will we still be cheering our successes while simultaneously scorning our neighbors or are we capable of evolving to some level of equanimity?
I've stopped laughing.
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