If I should name the one person that has influenced me the most in my life among those I have actually never met, then probably it would be the late Dr. Carl Sagan (November 9, 1934 – December 20, 1996). Carl Sagan was an astronomer, author and educator, especially famous for the television series Cosmos. And Cosmos was indeed where I first came across his work.
I think it is safe to say that whoever was born before 1980 and never heard about the Cosmos series, has probably missed out on the most important educational tv-show of all times. Cosmos was made when the cold war was still very much a hard reality. And I especially remember Carl Sagan talking about the importance of a civilization surviving its own technological puberty. I believe that is a very good way of putting it. Maybe civilizations are like teenagers, some don’t get past puberty, because they risk too much and get themselves killed in a “traffic accident.” What will be the faith of the human civilization? Today, facing the end of cheap fossil fuel, with a population way too large to sustain without some major achievements, we are once again reminded of Carl Sagan’s words, that we as a species owe our survival not only to ourselves, but to the Cosmos vast and ancient, from which we stem.
In the following video Carl Sagan shares some reflections he made 10 years after the making of Cosmos
Links
Wikipedia on Carl Sagan
The Carl Sagan Portal
Cosmos
The science network, “Sharing Carl Sagan’s vision of science as a candle in the dark”
More Carl Sagan videos
In the “Must see” category we pick interesting and inspiring videos that we find on the video sharing sites, mainly YouTube, showing people who are in general not associated with GLI, but do things that we believe our readers will find interesting.
Further reading:
- Must see: Richard Heinberg on our post carbon future
- Understanding peak oil
- Must see: Randy Pausch Last Lecture
- Must see: Transition movement’s Rob Hopkins on TED-talks
- Must see: A farm for the future
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