Let's just take a step back and look at the times we live in for a second. First of all, some of you are reading this op−ed on a device that also takes phone calls, plays music, keeps a calendar, has a calculator and has an abundance of games and "apps" meant to entertain. This same device can hook up wirelessly to a larger system through which it can access satellite photos of where to get the best fresh duck in rural Japan. It can then send those photos to the viewing portals of friends, family or strangers. Our food no longer has to be grown on farms, as most of it is produced in a manufacturing process requiring very few (if any) natural ingredients.
Companies around the world are making awe−inspiring breakthroughs: Researchers recently hacked a fly's brain and forced it to do their bidding by putting it into a virtual−reality matrix. Scientists have built and designed interactive holographic systems. Pick up any tech magazine and read its "year in review" issue and try not to freak out. Seriously people, we're taking the first steps into "The Future."
Remember "The Future?" It was that crazy ideal utopia that everyone in the '50s believed the year 2000 would be: flying cars, floating houses and maybe even a sassy robot maid. Well unfortunately, that prediction was all bollocks (at least thus far). Still, though lacking flying cars, our generation is the generation of the future. So it is up to us how this age is to be written and how "The Future" will be remembered once it is called "The Past."
What do we have to thank for this foray into the future? Nuclear weapons. Their development and deterrent effect resulted in a time of relative international peace. This has allowed a new generation of scientists to work together with unsurpassed security to design the incredible world that we live in today. I see it as two teams: "Team Freedom" (NATO) and "Team Communist" (the Warsaw Pact). "Team Freedom" installed quite a few puppet governments in the place of legitimate, elected democracies. And "Team Communist" had the most classist system since the caste system of ancient India.
But these hypocrisies were all done "in the name of progress." This was a war of science. Scientists on each side banded together to outdo each other for glory. The United States built an atomic bomb, the Soviet Union built an atomic bomb. The Soviet Union launched Sputnik, the Unite States made it to the moon. Grand international competition is the oft−discussed legacy of the Cold War, but this era was also the world's first period of international scientific cooperation. The exponential technological developments are proof of this.
Today's day and age is quite different from the one that called for the development of nuclear weapons. Fifty years of unprecedented conflict led to the atom bomb. Since then, most of the conflicts that followed have been the result of the posturing of the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Nuclear weapons brought an era of cooperation and scientific development to our world, and now they may be the very cause of its destruction.
Currently we have no efficient method of dealing with the spent waste of nuclear energy, nor the highly toxic byproducts that make up the radioactive "tailings" of uranium mining. They are currently indestructible. Terrorist groups have sought nuclear weapons since their creation and get closer every year. Much has been gained, but due to hubris and ego there have been many environmental and humanitarian tragedies.
So then where does that leave us? What is the end chapter of our nuclear age? Is it a comedy? Tragedy? Some kind of amazing Jason Bourne action movie with a spy who saves the world from annihilation at the last second? No one knows. We have yet to finish the chapter. The direction of the future is actually our decision. What our parents once hoped for we must work to make happen and then improve upon. The time for mere hope is done. Now is the time to work.
And work to what ends? Well, that's for you to decide. I'm not going to tell you what to believe. But I will tell you that whatever you believe you need to act on. Write your congressman. Become involved with local advocacy groups. Above all, continue to learn. No opinion is complete unless someone has all the facts. No one, besides God and that machine that just won jeopardy, has all the facts. No matter how smart you think you are, there is always more to learn. And considering we still don't have flying cars or a resilient global nuclear non−proliferation regime, there is still work to be done.
Welcome to the future. Start learning. Start listening. Start working. Now.
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