Richard Tomkins writes a singularly ignorant column in today’s Financial Times about the failures of science (subscription only, so I’ll spare you a link).
“By the mid-20th century we were so bedazzled by the wonders of technological progress that we began imagining a future in which machines would relieve us of the drudgery of work, leaving us free to live a life of aesthetic contemplation. Meals would be replaced with food pills, moving pavements would transport us along the streets and people would live in space colonies on Mars. Instead, what happened? We got the internet. Well, thanks, but we are singularly unimpressed.”
Leave aside for a moment his dismissal of the Internet, which is common fare these days. He also ignores the real advances science has provided in medicine, which has far greater consequences than food pills, moving pavements and space colonies; in agriculture, which means, for example, that India no longer has regular famines; in the sheer beauty of understanding the world and universe in which we live.
Bill Clinton had an extraordinary impact in Blackpool. It wasn’t just star power, although that is certainly part of it. He truly has the ability to express a humane, integrated view of the world that most people miss on the world stage these days.
Read Simon Hoggart’s take if you want to have some fun.