A character in Neal Stephenson’s latest book, “Seveneves”, opines that the focus on small, personal, technology, handheld or wearable, designed to connect, entertain, locate, monitor, guide, and engage individuals has overwhelmingly consumed the energies, investments, research, and focus of scientific communities, technology corporations, political stakeholders, and consumers and their advocates, resulting in a relative lack of resources and energy devoted to solving or even studying “big tech”, which is literally big: space exploration, bridges and highways, energy infrastructure and power distribution, mass transportation, and pollution and waste control. The fictional future of Earth he creates in the book is the opposite, because of an existential threat to humanity.

I believe this could be true. I like to imagine a world in which humans look out, or up, not down at our hands; are inspired to seek solutions for really big problems, rather than finding them intractable; and freely volunteer our time and talents to solutions that benefit many, rather than to those that enrich ourselves. That this sounds utopian and unrealistic to most Millennials I have no doubt, but some Boomers may remember when many, perhaps most, Americans trusted science and were inspired by the moon landing of 1969, or felt confident that using public policy to spread fairness, as in the Civil Rights Act of 1964, was both right and effective. As a lifelong science and history reader, I feel I have a good grasp of how things work in the world, and that I can sort sound ideas from spurious ones. I can hear the counter-arguments now, but for my part I would say if you haven’t availed yourself of basic education, exposed yourself to multiple sources and opinions, and validated your results through reasoning and empiricism, you may not be sorting accurately.

Having said all that, I will now confess that I really like texting. I feel it allows me to experience events, most recently the World Series, with friends and family who aren’t nearby. I started texting when our sons were in high school, because it was the best way to keep in touch– they could reply to a text without obviously displaying a tether to home. We still text, and they also introduced me to Snapchat, essentially text for photos. The great advantage of that app is it doesn’t save the photo, so you can say, Hey, look at this! without adding to your (burgeoning) photo gallery.

Socializing with friends and family is a source of personal satisfaction, but not a world-saver. Maybe it can fortify us for the larger accomplishments. Or maybe I have completely undermined my initial argument.