I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grand-children'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 what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness."
So wrote Carl Sagan in "The Demon-Haunted World - Science as a Candle in the Dark" in 1995, twenty-seven years ago. How prescient was that!
And he continued: "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 pseudo-science and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance. As I write, the number-one video cassette rental in America is the movie 'Dumb and Dumber'
To which I can add only four words: Not only in America!
