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Apollo 11 40th Anniversary

In case you’re somewhere on the planet without the internet, today is the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission that landed men on the moon on July 20, 1969. NASA has a commemorative site with lots of news, pictures, and interactive features.

Most striking, to me, in our age, is that Neil Armstrong, the man who actually stepped on the moon first, has deliberately avoided the public limelight. He doesn’t appear in People magazine every few years by choice. He’s never on TV. Instead, he’s lived out the life he wanted in Ohio. That’s truly odd, and wonderful, in an age that worships and promotes celebrity.

In 1969, personal technology meant a TV, radio, and telephone. Technology like Apollo 11, and mainframe computers, were too expensive and too complex to be run by anyone other than governments and well-funded corporations. Today, of course, personal technology includes updated versions of TV, radio, and phone but it also includes a host of internet-related services that most people take for granted. Especially if you have a phone with internet connectivity and a web browser.

While no government has matched what happened 40 years ago today, you could say that instead we created technology that helps billions of individuals. And much of that achievement has been based on the Apollo and other space and science missions. And much of that achievement has been from individuals from many countries who took government created technology, specifically the internet, to create technologies such as Google, eBay, Flickr, Facebook, Twitter, open source, and all the rest. We have had the technology revolution promised by Apollo. However, it has happened on earth, not space. And it’s been created and used by millions of people, not carefully selected astronauts.

All that said, as a web designer and coder, chained to computers all day and tormented at times by lousy Microsoft web browsers, my dream job is to herd goats in some mountain village somewhere that has no internet, no phone, no TV, no radio. You have to read books and talk to people to keep amused. You have to be outdoors hiking, swimming, or sitting around and watching the day pass. I would like universal health care, of course, and a professional government. My daughter tells me Norway might be just the ticket.

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