Thus The Technology Review on the front cover of its current issue, which reached me yesterday in the nick of Christmas. “Instead,” the title continues in bold lettering, “I got Facebook.” Buzz Aldrin, the Apollo 11 moonwalker, is taking the rest of the stark cover. Perfect! Just perfect! The article associated with the cover is by no-one else but the editor in chief, Jason Pontin. Transfixed, I could not read the article. Too much for me in my predicament. The front cover was enough for me. I went to the States in 1970 with Mars colonies uppermost on my mind. I taught about human habitat in space at MIT, whence the review in question, in the late Eighties in the same spirit. Yes, the earth orbit, the moon, Mars, the asteroid belt… The rest of the solar system would come next. The great beyond appeared to be within reach already. The cosmos. In my mind, it was ours. And then I got, well, Facebook. Looking into Aldrin’s eyes, I could see my own. Deep, bewildered disappointment with the bulging human species. Seven billion. Indeed, the moonwalker is I.

Addendum (July 17, 2019)

I just watched Buzz Aldrin speak in front of a large audience celebrating fifty years since the moon landing. All he had to add to the event is a stark warning about the lack of progress since then. “We all should be ashamed of that,” he concluded. Indeed. America has failed us all. Facebook is hardly an answer to space colonization, which was in the air half a century ago. I, too, cannot but feel ashamed. Wherever I look, the lack of progress is right in front of my eyes.