Month: September 2021

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Isaac Asimov's Foundation

Unlike DUNE, which I've read a dozen times or more, I've never been able to make it past the first fifty pages or so of Isaac Asimov's Foundation. It's not from lack of trying. At the risk of being branded a heretic, the story just didn't engage me the way other science fiction has.

Nonetheless, I was excited to hear of Apple TV+'s series based on Asimov's books, and basically coming into this cold, after seeing the first two episodes, I came away pretty damn impressed. Reviews are saying it deviates from the source material, but having never read the source material, I am nonetheless entertained and have been drawn into the story. The cast is outstanding and the visuals are among the best I've seen on the small screen. (I especially like the design of the FTL starships, generating their own black holes!)

I'm eagerly awaiting more. Unfortunately Apple doesn't let you binge until the season has run its course, so like with regular broadcast TV, I have to wait another week for the next installment.

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Are We There Yet?

Carl Sagan, "The Demon-Haunted World," 1995.

THE DEMON-HAUNTED WORLD

I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time – when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness. The dumbing down of America is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30-second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance.

Are we there yet?

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