6 ms·

If imdb's movie /year/1979/ list is to be believed, there was a lot of self loathing going on in films in the late 70s (i.e. Vietnam).

tjradcliffe 12y ago
You have no idea. One of my favourite 70's quotes is from the quite brilliant book "The Medieval Machine" by the Anglo-French historian Jean Gimpel, published in 1976 (which really is a very good history of Medieval technology): "The economic depression that struck Europe in the fourteenth century was followed ultimately by economic and technological recovery. But the depression we have moved into will have no end. We can anticipate centuries of decline and exhaustion. There will be no further industrial revolution in the cycles of our Western civilization." These words were written at the same time as Jobs, Wozniak, Gates and Allen were all hard at work. This smug bastard was just one voice amongst many telling the world that we were in the grip of a permanent, inexorable "malaise" that could at best be accepted passively, which there was no point in fighting, which had to be simply taken as given, unstoppable, forever. At the same time people like me were being told by teachers that we would never be able to image the disk of extra-solar stars or discover extra-solar planets, and so on [1]. Gleeful murderers of hope were desperately trying to crush any spark of innovation, creativity or freedom. And it was happening the world over. A relentless, ruthless, assault on the Enlightenment, the rule of law, and the industrial revolution. They failed. A lot of it was funded, ultimately, by the Soviets, who generated an enormous amount of propaganda that was intended to make people believe these things. One of the notable things that happened after the collapse of the Soviet Empire was the stunning pall of silence that fell over the Left in the West. It was almost as if the lifeblood of the whole enterprise had been cut off. Part of that was simple empiricism: it was hard for Leftists to hold up their pathologically insane ideas as "better" when their poster-child had just endured a complete and spectacular collapse, including the freeing of a large number of vassal states, all because some shipyard workers in Poland had laid down tools a decade before. But part of it was also that funding for a bunch of stuff that Comintern paid for (mostly by indirect means, in the same way the US government funds stuff through NGOs today) vanished. Today, hyper-capitalist brands like Naomi Klein are attempting to resurrect some of the old zombie Soviet ideas, but it's a pretty pathetic effort, full of contradictions and gibberish. They won't have a lot of influence, at the end of the day, and it is my firm belief that we are entering into a century of progress that will make the 19th century look staid and the 20th century look stupid. Having lived through the '70's, this is a good thing to see. [1] We have done both, and more: http://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/astronomers-image-lowest-mass-exoplanet-around-a-sun-like-star/ http://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/astronomers-image-lowest...
- olavk 12y ago
  Are you suggesting the Soviet Union founded covert propaganda to convince the west that exoplanets couldn't exist? Do you have any more information about this? Because on the face of it it sound like the craziest conspiracy theory I've ever heard.
  - Joeboy 12y ago
    To be fair I read it as meaning we would be incapable of discovering them, rather than that they didn't exist. But yes, taken as a whole the post is rather eccentric.
    - mikeash 12y ago
      I wasn't around at the time, but from the science fiction of the era, it looks like nobody really thought about how to detect exoplanets from Earth, because everyone assumed the curve of technological progress in propulsion would keep going and you'd just send scout ships to other stars to survey them up close.
      - Retra 12y ago
        To be fair, nuclear technology was still new and fresh.
- IndianAstronaut 12y ago
  >At the same time people like me were being told by teachers that we would never be able to image the disk of extra-solar stars or discover extra-solar planets, and so on [1] Wow, I never knew they were so pessimistic about that. I thought the science for visualizing extrasolar planets had always been there, they just needed the equipment built. Now I wonder what ideas today's pessimists have that will be disproven. Maybe Interstellar travel is really possible?
  - pharke 12y ago
    You shouldn't believe everything you read on the internet, some people are just out for their own crazy agendas. You're correct that the science has been there for quite some time and astronomers have been lobbying and popularizing the idea of building the necessary detection equipment for quite a while. There was even quite a good book written on the topic in 1966, a collaboration between a young American astronomer and an accomplished Soviet astronomer/astrophysicist [1]. It's a very interesting read, especially today now that we have accomplished some of the things they theorized about on the planets in our solar system and through observations of our stellar neighbourhood. I highly recommend it. [1] http://www.amazon.com/Intelligent-life-universe-I-Shklovskii/dp/B0006BM4BG http://www.amazon.com/Intelligent-life-universe-I-Shklovskii...
Joeboy 12y ago
That would be the "most popular" films of 1979, as rated in recent years. Here's imdb's biggest films of 1979 by US box office: http://www.imdb.com/search/title?at=0&sort=boxoffice_gross_us&title_type=feature&year=1979,1979 http://www.imdb.com/search/title?at=0&sort=boxoffice_gross_u... Alien is thrashed by Star Trek: The Motion Picture and Moonraker. Apocalypse Now is thrashed by The Muppet Movie.

tjradcliffe 12y ago

You have no idea. One of my favourite 70's quotes is from the quite brilliant book "The Medieval Machine" by the Anglo-French historian Jean Gimpel, published in 1976 (which really is a very good history of Medieval technology): "The economic depression that struck Europe in the fourteenth century was followed ultimately by economic and technological recovery. But the depression we have moved into will have no end. We can anticipate centuries of decline and exhaustion. There will be no further industrial revolution in the cycles of our Western civilization." These words were written at the same time as Jobs, Wozniak, Gates and Allen were all hard at work. This smug bastard was just one voice amongst many telling the world that we were in the grip of a permanent, inexorable "malaise" that could at best be accepted passively, which there was no point in fighting, which had to be simply taken as given, unstoppable, forever. At the same time people like me were being told by teachers that we would never be able to image the disk of extra-solar stars or discover extra-solar planets, and so on [1]. Gleeful murderers of hope were desperately trying to crush any spark of innovation, creativity or freedom. And it was happening the world over. A relentless, ruthless, assault on the Enlightenment, the rule of law, and the industrial revolution. They failed. A lot of it was funded, ultimately, by the Soviets, who generated an enormous amount of propaganda that was intended to make people believe these things. One of the notable things that happened after the collapse of the Soviet Empire was the stunning pall of silence that fell over the Left in the West. It was almost as if the lifeblood of the whole enterprise had been cut off. Part of that was simple empiricism: it was hard for Leftists to hold up their pathologically insane ideas as "better" when their poster-child had just endured a complete and spectacular collapse, including the freeing of a large number of vassal states, all because some shipyard workers in Poland had laid down tools a decade before. But part of it was also that funding for a bunch of stuff that Comintern paid for (mostly by indirect means, in the same way the US government funds stuff through NGOs today) vanished. Today, hyper-capitalist brands like Naomi Klein are attempting to resurrect some of the old zombie Soviet ideas, but it's a pretty pathetic effort, full of contradictions and gibberish. They won't have a lot of influence, at the end of the day, and it is my firm belief that we are entering into a century of progress that will make the 19th century look staid and the 20th century look stupid. Having lived through the '70's, this is a good thing to see. [1] We have done both, and more: http://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/astronomers-image-lowest-mass-exoplanet-around-a-sun-like-star/ http://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/astronomers-image-lowest...

olavk 12y ago
Are you suggesting the Soviet Union founded covert propaganda to convince the west that exoplanets couldn't exist? Do you have any more information about this? Because on the face of it it sound like the craziest conspiracy theory I've ever heard.
- Joeboy 12y ago
  To be fair I read it as meaning we would be incapable of discovering them, rather than that they didn't exist. But yes, taken as a whole the post is rather eccentric.
  - mikeash 12y ago
    I wasn't around at the time, but from the science fiction of the era, it looks like nobody really thought about how to detect exoplanets from Earth, because everyone assumed the curve of technological progress in propulsion would keep going and you'd just send scout ships to other stars to survey them up close.
    - Retra 12y ago
      To be fair, nuclear technology was still new and fresh.
IndianAstronaut 12y ago
>At the same time people like me were being told by teachers that we would never be able to image the disk of extra-solar stars or discover extra-solar planets, and so on [1] Wow, I never knew they were so pessimistic about that. I thought the science for visualizing extrasolar planets had always been there, they just needed the equipment built. Now I wonder what ideas today's pessimists have that will be disproven. Maybe Interstellar travel is really possible?
- pharke 12y ago
  You shouldn't believe everything you read on the internet, some people are just out for their own crazy agendas. You're correct that the science has been there for quite some time and astronomers have been lobbying and popularizing the idea of building the necessary detection equipment for quite a while. There was even quite a good book written on the topic in 1966, a collaboration between a young American astronomer and an accomplished Soviet astronomer/astrophysicist [1]. It's a very interesting read, especially today now that we have accomplished some of the things they theorized about on the planets in our solar system and through observations of our stellar neighbourhood. I highly recommend it. [1] http://www.amazon.com/Intelligent-life-universe-I-Shklovskii/dp/B0006BM4BG http://www.amazon.com/Intelligent-life-universe-I-Shklovskii...

Joeboy 12y ago

That would be the "most popular" films of 1979, as rated in recent years. Here's imdb's biggest films of 1979 by US box office: http://www.imdb.com/search/title?at=0&sort=boxoffice_gross_us&title_type=feature&year=1979,1979 http://www.imdb.com/search/title?at=0&sort=boxoffice_gross_u... Alien is thrashed by Star Trek: The Motion Picture and Moonraker. Apocalypse Now is thrashed by The Muppet Movie.