What is our (my) generations Moon Landing?

The Internet.

Maybe not everyone was watching the TV when it came around but it’s development has done more for global communication than anything that proceeded it. In some respects, it is a larger accomplishment than landing a human on the moon.

Desert Storm.

Probably the Mars Exploration Rover Mission. Although, it really wasn’t that big a deal to most people, which is actually pretty sad.

American Idol.

The Inauguration. This year. Obama’s campaign, election night, and the inauguration. I really think in some ways, he was our Moon Landing.

A friend of mine works at a telecom and showed me the graph of internet usage that day/time versus a normal day/time. It was insane.

I kinda agree with @EmpressPixie, it was a huge deal and I think a very large percentage of Americans watched it live.

I also agree with @EmpressPixie. It was Obama’s election and inauguration. Do you know anyone who wasn’t watching it? I can think of maybe one person who didn’t, yet I know scores of people who missed classes to watch it.

Too bad he didn’t do shit yet.

The McRib.

As far as Obama’s election and inauguration goes. Do not make it to be bigger then it is.
If he was not qualified he would not have the job. 25 years ago I would have seen it as a WOW thing.

I didn’t watch his inauguration. Didn’t matter to me. The only thing slightly special about him is that his skin’s darker than most presidents (Still got a white mom like the other 43). That didn’t really seem amazing enough to make me want to care about politicians even for a split second.

No one is saying anything about Obama’s qualifications or if he even deserved the to win the election. The facts remain, millions of people skipped out on school and work just to watch an inauguration, thousands of people even witnessed the event first hand. Say what you want about Obama, but the inauguration will definitely go down in history as one of this nations “remember where you were when…” events.

In terms of media exposure i would have to say Brittney Spears’ vagina flash then spiral downwards into the depths of insanity…

As far as real impact on world events and most likely history, It would have to be the Election of the first African American President, preceded by the first presidential campaign to include a strong and viable female candidate.

@ChazMaz Yeah, he did have to be qualified, obviously… And I’m very glad he is! :) The thing is, even an extremely qualified black man wouldn’t have had a chance 25 years ago. Personally, I think that is a WOW thing.

And @everyone, as @J0E said, whether you think Obama sucks or is Jeebus in president form, the whole deal was a pretty frigging impressive thing, and I’m sure our whole generation will be telling our kids and grandkids about it.

I wasn’t trying to say he’s any better or worse than any other president (I certainly am relieved he beat McCain)
All I’m trying to say is, the only reason anyone cares at all about him being president is that he’s dark-skinned. And the fact that that is considered an accomplishment really shows how far we haven’t come.

You have the Genome Project! That will add so much to our understanding of disease, genetics, medical conditions and the history of life.

@Sarcasm, That’s like saying the only reason anyone cares about the moon landing is because we landed on the moon. Duh. Of course that’s why it was a big deal, he’s the first African-American president.

@worriedguy beat me to it. Though our culture doesn’t celebrate it as much as they should, we live in an era with oversaturation of media, public apathy and the celebration of ignorance, decoding the human genome will probably go down in history as the most important event in the history of mankind.

It’ll be the moon landings we see in the next few years, the colonization of the moon and hopefully Mars!

@dalepetrie You get it. It saddens me that the majority of Americans don’t even know what happened and what it all means. So many discove3ries already and so much promise.
People are still looking at 20 year old biology books (or much older texts). They will only wake up when a particular disease affecting a family member is cured. In 10 years medicines will not be the same.

@J0E :|
The moon landing took millions of man-hours, not to mention dollars, putting together the smartest minds in the scientific community. It’s not like there was a ship docked in a country since the beginning of man, perfectly created and preserved, just waiting for some nutjobs to slap a few buttons inside of it.
It had to be created.

@Sarcasm; So basically you’re saying Obama didn’t do any work to become the President…

No more than any other president.

Which equals is a large amount, plus he had to overcome the racial barrier. Yes, it is not as historically significant as the moon landing, but it is up there.

I didn’t watch the inauguration. The leader of the slavers first day on the job is of no interest to me.
@J0E @fireinthepriory @EmpressPixie

@Zendo: And I’m sure there were tons of people who didn’t watch the moon landing either. You can’t change the fact that most of America did. Despite pressing obligations like work in a horrible economy. That means something. No matter how much you wish it didn’t.

@EmpressPixie It is always fun to watch people getting the woll pulled over there eyes.

@Zendo Dude…

The inauguration coverage crashed the BBC’s iPlayer live feed. The source also states that “about 7.7 million video streams, primarily live, were being viewed at peak time Tuesday, which was at about 12:15 p.m. EST.”

Here is another article about the internet use that day. Here are some highlights: “The inauguration broke an all-time record for the number of simultaneous video streams…An average of 4,000 Facebook status updates were set every minute during the inauguration. They peaked the minute Obama began his speech, with 8,500 status messages set in those 60 seconds…the rate of “tweets” (Twitter messages) per second hit as much as five times the normal rate, and that the rate of tweets per minute hit four times the normal rate…early data indicates the live stream of the inauguration pulled in a record number of viewers compared to all the live video [the NY Times has] ever run.”

Still think the wool’s over our eyes and not yours…?

The discovery that we better do something very quickly and decisively to save the planet from humans inconceivable waste, pollution, and plundering.

@fireinthepriory Proof that the old saw, “Just because millions of people think a thing is so..” doesn’t mean the thing is so. It doesn’t matter how many people watched the inauguration. Obama is just another in a long line of presidential appointments who are only in it for themselves, and if he happens to o something that is actully beneficial to those of us who earn very little money per annum…well, that surely was by accident.

You must be very young to think that America’s presidential elections mean squat. But I suppose it is best to live a life of ignorance, joining when you can’t beat them.

@Zendo Actually, in terms of the question, it does matter how many people watched it! The question is asking about the moon landing of this generation, an event where “everyone just stopped what they are doing to see something.” I agree with you that the number of people watching says absolutely nothing about the presidency itself (the man or the office). But no one said that’s what it means. What I’m saying is that the inauguration was similar to the moon landing in that millions of people watched it happen, from around the world. Which was the question. :)

@fireinthepriory: Exactly. Yes. Perfect response.

@EmpressPixie Aw, shucks… :)

Basically the problem is that people are not separating “celebrated” or “popular” from “important”. The importance of Obama’s inauguration was probably an event that was just as celebrated as the moon landing, it made millions of people all over the world stop and pause, which is the criteria for the question. That doesn’t mean it’s as important as the moon landing. Whereas decoding the genome basically will allow scientist to understand how the human body works like never before, we can now find out exactly what causes any given disease because we can see exactly where the deviations show up, which will help us basically cure all these things that have so vexed us for so many years….but when that news story came out, it didn’t stop traffic, even though we’re talking about something that will basically do more for medical and biological sciences in the next 20 years than everything that came before it put together.

before i saw “nothing positive, anyhow” i was going to say michael jacksons death. sad but true lol

I didn’t watch the moon landing, I was too busy on the hospital ship off the coast of VietNam. (I missed Woodstock, too!). But I did attend Mr. Obama’s acceptance speech at the convention, and I did watch the inauguration.

Our society (US- and Euro-influenced) has become more fragmented, with each little demographic looking out for its own collective interest. We struggle day to day for a paycheck or to survive without one, and have no incentive to combine our energies for a true collective “oomph”, like the space race.

I think our next “space race” should must be a greening of industry.