Trinity
A thing I would dearly love to watch is a nuclear explosion. To me, nuclear explosions are the biggest statement there is of the grandness of the reach of humankind. (Also the launch of a space rocket.)
The world's first nuclear explosion occured on July 16th 1945 at Alamogordo Air Base in New Mexico. It was called Trinity. The pictures to the left are taken from the video-clips below. Also, see the book 100 Suns for more pictures.
Click on these images to enlarge them. Trinity gadget, jumbo, crater, explosion:
A different 100kton explosion:
The shape of things to come
I am a researcher in computer science. I am right at the front of progress and technology. It is exciting, but sometimes makes me wonder. The following dialog comes from the film Things To Come, based on a book by H.G. Wells. See film details at IMDB or a plot synopsis with pictures.
Raymond Passworthy: What is this progress? What is the good of all this progress onward and onward? We demand a halt. We demand a rest... an end to progress!
. . .
Raymond Passworthy: Oh, God, is there ever to be any age of happiness? Is there never to be any rest?
Oswald Cabal: Rest enough for the individual man — too much, and too soon — and we call it death. But for Man, no rest and no ending. He must go on, conquest beyond conquest. First this little planet with its winds and ways, and then all the laws of mind and matter that restrain him. Then the planets about him and at last out across immensity to the stars. And when he has conquered all the deeps of space and all the mysteries of time, still he will be beginning.
RP: But... we're such little creatures. Poor humanity's so fragile, so weak. Little... little animals.
OC: Little animals. If we're no more than animals, we must snatch each little scrap of happiness and live and suffer and pass, mattering no more than all the other animals do or have done. Is it this? Or that? All the universe? Or nothingness? Which shall it be, Passworthy? Which shall it be?