When it all went wrong

[james_davis_nicoll]

From a previous comment on my LJ:

I thought there was a significant contingent of politicians who feel most of the developments since [The development of agriculture/the Industrial Revolution/The Great Depression/Women's Lib/Etc (Pick one)] have been mistakes and that if only we could set the clock back, everything would be fine.

Or at least better than it is.

A Canadian example of a When It All Went Wrong (WIAWW) moment is the Avro Arrow, something that many Canadians are still bitching about (Mind you, Canada is a nation with a province whose motto is "Je me souviens," but none with the motto "No Use Crying Over Spilled Milk"). In fact, my father used to complain bitterly about the cancellation of the Arrow and not only was he not Canadian (until just before he died) but I don't think he was in Canada when the decision was made and he didn't work in aerospace. Complaining about the Arrow decision unites Canadians in one great mopey If Only.

Ken MacLeod chooses Sputnik as a moment when everything went wrong.

Is there any chance someone could offer up some links for Ken to use in his alt-history of space development that don't require him to cite a James P. Hogan essay? Yes, I saw the disclaimer in MacLeod's essay.

Comments

Strangely, I felt no need to click on that

[(Anonymous)]

MacLeod's not as daft as OSC, but they do have some things in common. Most notably, both of them stopped thinking a while ago, and now just shave and squeeze incoming facts until they fit certain preconceptions.

I gather that this recycles a couple of standard MacLeod tropes: the USSR got Communism all wrong, and then the Western Capitalist anti-Communist immune response fatally damaged Western Capitalism. (Actually, those are standard tropes of a certain sort of British lefty, but never mind that now.) There is a case to be made for both these propositions, but AFAICT it's not the case MacLeod is making.

Also, while I don't mind British intellectuals (or even wannabe intellectuals) telling me stuff about US history, I'd prefer that they know what the hell they're talking about. Putting aside the whole spaceplane thing, the response to Sputnik didn't cause innumeracy, nor the culture wars either; that's really well into "not even wrong" territory.


Doug M.

Re: Strangely, I felt no need to click on that

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

I don't think he says anything here about Communism being all wrong. Sputnik doesn't screw up space directly, but indirectly through (he says) the US abandoning spaceplanes for the Apollo white elephant. Don't think there's anything about fatal damage to Capitalism either, just damage, via creationism and the Sputnik -> New Math -> Bad Math chain which Richard Feynman bought into in his autobiography (chapter on vetting textbooks, and being horrified.)

Re: Strangely, I felt no need to click on that

[wakboth.livejournal.com]

Be as it may, MacLeod certainly is a better writer than OSC.