Happy Birthday to Sputnik 1, launched 51 years ago today. Those of us who lived and breathed comics and science fiction saw an inevitable first step toward space exploration, and we picked up on the omigod vibe that the Russians beat us to it. Of course we didn’t see the whole picture, which you can get from Nova’s “Sputnik Declassified” – we didn’t get that the space race was about military surveillance, not scienterrific exploration of the cosmos. If you think Reagan’s “star wars” plan, the Strategic Defense Initiative, was new thinking, guess again. Eisenhower was already there.
Co-wrangler of Plutopia News Network, cohost Radio Free Plutopia. Podcaster, writer, dharma observer, enzyme. Former editor/publisher, FringeWare Review; associate editor at bOING bOING and Factsheet Five; writer at Mondo 2000, 21C, Wired, Whole Earth Review, Austin Chronicle; sub-editor at Millennium Whole Earth Catalog; blogger at Worldchanging. Digital culture maven, podcaster, writer, dharma observer, enzyme. On The WELL, Cohost of VC (virtual communities), Media, and Civil War (.ind) conferences.
View all posts by Jon Lebkowsky
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