Sarah Coffey, an editor at Dow Jones Newswires, recently complained, “I just wish I could turn on my light without having to ask my phone to do it!” So it goes. Pavlov rules. The silent epidemic spreads as we surrender personal, psychological and communal power without a shot being fired in anger or before a subversive move has been made against us. We decided that someone or something else should turn our lights on and off, our marvelously connected devices complied, our industry helped enable it – and then we got mad!
I remind myself daily that those connected devices are also connected to satellites – and to free will. Mine. It has become a prayer of sorts. The other prayer is of gratitude for knowing what I know about the industry, and for all the good and convenience offered by the devices I too complain that “enslave” me. SpaceX leader Elon Musk famously shared a similar conflict within himself. In his case, a nap and a day at the beach are prescribed.
For every action there is reaction. So it is with the unprecedented success of communications and connectivity, which our industry has been instrumental in enabling in ways unthinkable before our era. Yet the lights are also getting brighter on a growing backlash against technology, globalism and good old life-saving human intelligence and reason. Let’s call it The Light of Darkness. We may claim a neutrality of sorts, not unlike Facebook a few Congressional hearings ago, and assume that our belief in science, progress and the better angels will always prevail.
“We are just the plumbers,” a CEO said on a panel I hosted. Some of us are quick to add under our breath, “Don’t blame me.”
Perhaps it is all true. But the plumbers are going to launch 7,000 smallsats by 2022, according to Euroconsult, and have made sure that when you want a pizza in Brooklyn at 12:30 AM, you are directed to Tonino’s for their Sicilian slice. Not everyone assumes these are common virtues.
Because in the world people still wonder if satellites are spying on them. In the world, peoples’ thumbs move as smoothly as a three-card monte dealer’s across tiny screens. And those thumbs have produced a form of blindness. It has appeared, oddly, in politics, which is often a gateway into our own hearts. We get mad, we get tired and we sputter due to a lack of time and focus, but we are not sure why or at whom this anger or frustration should be directed. We walk away from relationships, and the hard work they require, and we invest (waste?) time around gadgets and devices; keyboards and games, hoping the distraction relieves a global anxiety we cannot identify; hoping somehow it will all get sorted out by someone or something. Some – many – have begun to blame “technology!” To find relief we buy New Age toys, sign up for hot stone treatments, meditation in high-heels in tepees with native peoples’ guiding us romantically back to a time when the central nervous system was, evidently, only moving along at 15 miles per hour.
As they say at Tonino’s, “Fahget about it.” The old days were fine for a lot of us, but always look better when you are scared of the path ahead.
Satellite is Heroic Novel, Not just a Manual
It was with all of this in mind that we started to offset the fear and the insularity by poking holes at it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4ndk3SvL6Q. We now regularly tell the story of an industry where fulfilling the demand for capacity not only keeps pace with an information grid that is increasingly essential to the management of ships, food supplies and our cities, but also helps us overcome disasters. The narrative has changed. The vision of a better world is more associated with our industry than ever before because we are telling a human story, not a technical one. We are a heroic novel, not a manual.
In our new Podcast series, “The Better Satellite World,” we have spent the past few weeks talking about how our industry is in line with the new Crisis Connectivity Charter, recently signed in May 2018, with the intention of making sure that the foreboding sense of helplessness many feel is not the reality when a disaster strikes.
What we hope to reveal through our new podcast, which includes an exclusive “Making Leaders” series, is that It is mainly OUR choice. Not the phone’s. We all need to look at the “Better Satellite World” to see where we play a role in pushing back against whatever tide is beating someone – anyone – down. At Notre Dame University they have a great campaign called, “What Would You Fight For?” It is an essential question and many of the entrepreneurs, astropreneurs and young Promise Award recipients at the Future Leaders Dinner we know guide us because their mandate is to fight for that better world.
It is our choice for sure. Our game to lose. “Every conversion is a soul saved,” they used to say. (And still do.)
Today, on the street, a young dude wearing a NASA baseball hat was walking alongside me outside the bakery on Third Avenue. I asked about that hat. He said he wanted to study astronomy and space related sciences. I told him what I tell you here (sort of). Five minutes later he took out his device, swiped his thumb to the www.sspi.org site and gave me a thumbs up.
“This is cool. This is for real. This is for the good. I will check it out.”
If you are interested in the new SSPI podcast, go to: https://www.sspi.org/cpages/podcast
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Lou Zacharilla is the Director of Innovation and Development of the Space and Satellite Professionals International (SSPI). He can be reached at: LZacharilla@sspi.org
