Oct 04
50th Anniversary of the Sputnik Launch
Editorial, De-mythology, Big Clash, From the History of the 'Big Clash', Freedom of Choice, Times&Spaces, Clash Add comments
Congrats to the whole Human Race!
On October the 4th, 50 years ago, Soviets launched Sputnik. Wonder, whose idea was to put the Sputnik image into the Google’s logo? Probably, Sergey’s, who was born in Moscow, and whose family immigrated to the US from the Soviet Union in 1979.
Could the Google’s launch into the Internet Universe be compared to the historic Sputnik launch? I guess so. And it is only THE BEGINNING.
October 10th, 2007 at 7:33 pm
I still remember the time. There was a lot of disappointment on this side about how our education system failed us and allowed the other side to achieve this first.
And the discussion of the implications of that little orb with it’s constant beep beep beep usually revolved around something bad coming down on our heads.
It was almost impossible to imagine a future day when we would be using a little hand-held device to listen to those beeps from many satellites to tell us exactly where we are on earth. (among many other modern miracles)
The only major explosion from the space race was in the pace of scientific research and development that lead to commercial products produced in mass so they are easily affordable by almost anyone.
October 10th, 2007 at 9:39 pm
OldDogNewTrick,
Oh, it is a very interesting remark. Especially from a person who saw and witnessed the ‘whole affair’, I mean, political and social consequences and ’shock waves’ this ‘beeping can on the orbit’ was sending down on Earth.
I think, however, we are already somewhere near the moment in the Human Race history where we should think about how to overcome the bad memories left from that period.
And I’m pretty optimistic about us, reasonable and active contemporary individuals, that we could manage this eventually - and even in spite of the recent tendencies in global politics that is seemingly sliding back to somewhat resembling ‘Cold War’ times. We have to CORRECT them, ‘Big Shots’
Google, Internet, Social networking through this instruments help communications between people a lot. Keeping communications going is of ‘Paramount importance’ in resolving any kind of misunderstandings, so - let’s talk!