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 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..." [Carl Sagan in "The Demon-Haunted World"]
Thirty years ago, Carl Sagan predicted what the USA would be like in the future. He died far too early in December 1996, just sixty-two years old and just seven months after the above interview was recorded. Carl Sagan spent much of his adult life inspiring others, and the human race lost one of its finest. What a legacy he left behind!
The above audiobook is AI-generated but perhaps still better than reading the whole 400-plus pages online (unless you want to buy it on ebay for $30 or, if you're lucky, find it at your local op-shop for a mere two dollars). Reading it is time well spent because, as he said here ...
"What an astonishing thing a book is. It's a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you're inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic."
