The New Exploration Olympics
I think Sam makes a great point in comparing the expenditures for the Mars Curiosity mission vs. the 2012 London Olympics. It’s not completely fair comparison since one was a US project, while the other was Britain’s, with a lot of help from the rest of the world. The Mars mission was conducted by NASA, an agency of the US government, while the 2012 Olympics were produced by a combination of public and private entities as described here. Roughly 82% of the $14.5 billion Olympic price tag came from public sector sources.
But given that the US and Britain are very similar societies, it’s not unreasonable to consider the differences between the two events as if they emerged from a single society.
The most obvious distinction is the fact that one event predominantly celebrates physical prowess, while the other is primarily a stunning intellectual achievement based on the utilization of cutting edge science and technology.
Sponsorship - Promotion - Adverting
That is a key difference, of course, and we know that sports consistently draw larger audiences than science. However, part of the reason for that is also the amount of advertising and hype that goes in, and money that comes out. While over 900 million people watched the Olympic opening ceremony on TV, a mere 3.2 million people watched the Mars landing (though many watched in afterwards on the Internet). Those TV ratings translate in to billions of dollars which is a second key difference: the money to be made.
It says a lot about our values and it says a lot about our culture. As Susan Cain points out in her book, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can’t Stop Talking, introversion, along with sensitivity and seriousness has become a second-class personality trait. In a world that worships athletes, pop musicians and actors while yawning at the mere mention of a scientist, historian or engineer, style is going to outdo substance every time.
This has become a serious problem as more and more rock-star personality types are skyrocketing into corporate boardrooms and political positions and then rolling over their more contemplative counterparts with the sheer force of their personalities. Cain makes the point that with their inherent propensity for risk-taking, these rock-star CEOs were largely responsible for the financial meltdown.
Will compassion ever outrun glamour?
So how can we change this? How do we make thinking as well-respected as shooting from the hip? How do we make knowledge as cool as speed? Will wisdom ever cross the finish line before strength? Will compassion ever outrun glamour?
Will the thinking arts ever generate the excitement of sports? Noble efforts have been made and not without some measure of success. The US Firstrobotic competition, founded by Dean Kamen, has enjoyed considerable popularity. This is where high school students pair up with corporate sponsors to design robots that will compete against other robots in a unique sporting events.
At the end of the day, there needs to be balance. We need both doers and thinker, athletes and scientists, introverts and extroverts to comprise a well-functioning society. Today’s story seems to indicates that the balance has clearly tipped, and in the spirit of this website, I am going to make a wish that more people become aware of this problem, and take action to restore balance by encouraging their children to study, by foregoing TV for a good book and by paying more attention and lending support to those things that challenge our minds as well as our bodies.
Of course, when it comes to making money, like the tortoise outrunning the hare, science and technology do eventually win that race, outpacing sports, even if it is less exciting to watch. But consider these products that have derived directly from the space program:charcoal water filters (e.g. Brita), smoke detectors, kidney dialysis machines, ceramic materials, memory foam, bar-coding, satellite TV, MRI machines, laser surgery, and many more, including, of course Tang, not to mention all the hundreds of products that have come from both individual and corporate research and you can see, that if we let the excitement get the best of us, we do so at our peril.
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Business, Discovery, Innovation, Wisdom | tagged Adventure, Dreams, Exploration, Imagination, Inovation, Priorities, Social Value, Values, proportionality Permalink Print Article