Do you ever wonder what it is like
to do this? Consider the interaction of peer grouping, territoriality,
and a fringe person's handiworks
Science Fiction writers had stimulated
others' imagination, resulting in real action in the physical
world. Rival nations saw the Earth's moon as a potential base
from which to launch missiles at the other. The resulting race
to the Moon was a tense and sometimes glorious one, stimulating
some of the best skills of a people; fame and fortunes made by
individuals and corporations in the process. The Moon was then
declared off-limits for missile launch platforms, and they all
went back home, problem solved, game over. But dreamers, adventurers,
wealthy corporations, still felt the echoes of the wealth, power
and glory of the space race, and sought more. Struggling to maintain
the space technology expertise level, commercial ventures used
the reaction engine launch technology to put small communication
and navigation satellites into Earth orbit, a couple of tiny space
stations, scientific instruments sent to curiously look further
out into space, and also nations put cameras into space to fearfully
peer at the doings of their supposed rivals.
Then someone comes along, a fringe
person almost unknown (a very unwelcome somewhat paranoid almost-old
man by then... yes, me) who claims he knows how the skills of
a world could be crafted into a way to expand civilization mightily
into Earth orbit in the near future, hopefully quickly enough
to save humanity from its own resource consumption and civilization's
waste products, and to enable saving the Earth's ecosystem from
their terminal entropic wastage. The powerful peer groups who
had established control over the space endeavor territory, character
assassinated and hid the old man's ravings from the world, methodically
cutting off his contacts and preventing new ones (especially with
potentially mate-able women) from being formed, while they covertly
learned all they could from his handiwork, preparing to control
this potentially great new game field on which for them to continue
to irresponsibly powerfully romp; instead of responsibly tending
to the needs of an expanding human civilization and of the wonderfuly
diverse fragile ecosystem of life upon which they unwittingly
depend.
How dare a non-college graduate
pretend these things can be done?!
Peer group members, whose skills
and competancy have been honed and refined to the level of expertise
in a field through the process of competitive drive to excel over
others, polishing up each other's skills by rubbing against peers
while each striving to do better than the others, compulsively
ever ready to aggress against another yet by the rules;
Territories, not just territorial
areas of ground on the Earth's surface, but also territories of
intellectual effort, territories of licensed business, territories
of almost any endeavor, as established by the peer groups which
establish themselves to operate within them;
And a fringe person, (yes, me again)
whose potentially very pivitol hobby-created technological conceptual
design product, result of a lifetime of fascination with science
and technlogy and imaginative re-assembly into new forms of potential
new uses, resulting in a perhaps final grand handiwork, yet a
mere college dropout struggling to pay bills by working as an
electronic technician, who has little upsmanship skills of rivalry,
has slowly been surrounded by the territory-establishing process
of rivalry-trained peer group members who resent the possibility
of Rocket Scientists being replaced by mere Civil Engineers. Not
a popular thing to do! Guess what happens!
This is the scenario in which I now
discover myself. This is what it is like. Being in the uncomfortable,
somewhat dangerous, and very unpopular position of the fringe
person who has assembled a potentially extremely valuable thing:
a conceptual design that could change the course of history, for
better or for worse, depending on the skill, resources, and wisdom
of the designers and of the doers.
on 2000 09 24
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