[Genuine Realist]

And relating this to covid, my bet is that a century from now, this will be what matters to history, and not the pandemic - an interesting footnote.

Like the Vietnam War, the Korean conflict, WWII, WWI, Spanish American War, etc?  Or the 60s counter-culture movements?
Like Measles, Mumps, Rubella, Yellow Fever, TB, Cancer, Polio, the Plague, etc?

"What matters" is so ridiculously subjective and seems to flit around like Paris fashions (which seems so out of fashion).

I know some of the people that were involved in the very beginnings of what is now the Internet.  I've been thinking how personally & scientifically tougher this pandemic would be if we had the technology of the 1950s.   I think I'm going to write them a Thank You note.

The first network transmissions happened about 4 months after the first moon landing (with Woodstock in the middle).  It is interesting to see what has had the bigger impact.   You won't find that unless you know what to look for in some chronology of 1969.  Too many athletic & music events clutter it up.

I think the beginnings of the Internet can more properly be dated to 1974, with the creation of ARPANET, with its super redundant telephone capacity - and at the same time, a couple of guys in Los Altos were putting together a personal computer.

But I agree with your point. THAT's what was important, and not Watergate, or the fears of a nuclear winter, or all the other fashionable alarums of the day. And this fusion research is what is important now, for my two cents. And not only that - Applications of AI so monumental they are hard to conceive - I understand the latest iteration of Alpha Zero attained grand master status in chess in just a few hours WITHOUT being taught the moves - the programmers just gave it a few dozen games and told it to figure it out. 

What's important is not necessarily what's public and memorable, which is often misunderstood anyway. Covid gets all the publicity, but in a deeper sense, it doesn't signify. It's quite a world we live in, and getting more interesting by the second.

[Genuine Realist]

And relating this to covid, my bet is that a century from now, this will be what matters to history, and not the pandemic - an interesting footnote.

Like the Vietnam War, the Korean conflict, WWII, WWI, Spanish American War, etc?  Or the 60s counter-culture movements?
Like Measles, Mumps, Rubella, Yellow Fever, TB, Cancer, Polio, the Plague, etc?

"What matters" is so ridiculously subjective and seems to flit around like Paris fashions (which seems so out of fashion).

I know some of the people that were involved in the very beginnings of what is now the Internet.  I've been thinking how personally & scientifically tougher this pandemic would be if we had the technology of the 1950s.   I think I'm going to write them a Thank You note.

The first network transmissions happened about 4 months after the first moon landing (with Woodstock in the middle).  It is interesting to see what has had the bigger impact.   You won't find that unless you know what to look for in some chronology of 1969.  Too many athletic & music events clutter it up.

I think the beginnings of the Internet can more properly be dated to 1974, with the creation of ARPANET, with its super redundant telephone capacity - and at the same time, a couple of guys in Los Altos were putting together a personal computer.

But I agree with your point. THAT's what was important, and not Watergate, or the fears of a nuclear winter, or all the other fashionable alarums of the day. And this fusion research is what is important now, for my two cents. And not only that - Applications of AI so monumental they are hard to conceive - I understand the latest iteration of Alpha Zero attained grand master status in chess in just a few hours WITHOUT being taught the moves - the programmers just gave it a few dozen games and told it to figure it out. 

What's important is not necessarily what's public and memorable, which is often misunderstood anyway. Covid gets all the publicity, but in a deeper sense, it doesn't signify. It's quite a world we live in, and getting more interesting by the second.