Once, the future was spaceflight. Now it’s cat videos and status updates

It’s an immensely strange thing, the end of the space age. Imagine telling the vast audience who, in 1969, watched a live broadcast of Neil Armstrong stepping onto the moon that they would lose interest in the endeavour within three years.

Spaceflight was the very embodiment of the future, yet the moon program came to a quiet end. Over the decades, manned spaceflight went from a defining human achievement to a very expensive niche interest. Those viewers may or may not have recognized that the marvel that was going to describe their futures wasn’t on the moon, but right in front of them: the broadcast itself .... http://www.theglobeandmail.com