It Starts with Sputnik and Goes On (and On)

Here is what I am going to do for the next eight paragraphs: ramble. But there is a thread. Read on.

On October 4, 1957, Sputnik was launched. America freaks out, causing what is commonly thought of as the revamping of math and science classes in American schools.

On October 5, 2007, I rented October Sky with Jake Gyllenhaal and based on the book Rocket Boys by Homer Hickam. Good Flick. In short, it is about how a young boy in a mining town looks up, sees Sputnik, and freaks out (in a good way).

The following is an unrelated piece on old time Chemistry Sets on Wired Science that I saw last week. Basically, we do not have Chemistry Sets anymore because of parents freaking out over safety.


When I was young I was fascinated with radio. I even built myself a Crystal Set Radio. I loved crystal sets because they never ran out out battery power. Crystal sets do not use batteries.

It got me to think about what would be the modern equivalent. Well, you could build your own MP3 Player.

Or possibly build your own HD Radio? Well, actually, no you can't. The codecs (coder/decoder of the digital bits) they chose for American HD-Radio is proprietary so you can't willy-nilly pick up a 50 dollar chip that will decode the stream. In essence, radio broadcasters and the F.C.C. freaked out - to protect themselves. They could have, should have, used OGG. But no.

So, now my point: we have become a country of end users, waiting for discovery to come to us pre-packaged, homogenized, patented and clean.

Real discovery was never clean.