For the past several weeks, I have been watching the Discovery Channel’s reissue of Carl Sagan’s Cosmos. And I am impressed by how well this has held up over the decades.

And I am so amazed at the way he ties the Abyss to the Infinite. This is classic.

I mean, this is all remedial for me: Sagan knew nothing of 11-dimensional String Theory, or Quantum Computing. On tonight’s episode, he marvels at the New York Public Library’s “10¹⁵ bits of information.”

I think that’s a gross underestimate. But no matter. Sagan also prophesized the emergence of a “global intelligence.” And is that not what we are approaching with the Internet?

But yet, Sagan also prophesizes about mankind’s rise above the lizard’s instincts of territoriality and homopredation. And I don’t see that we’ve made any progress on that front.

Here, I chose to quote Gene Roddenberry and C. J. Holland (via Patrick Stewart)¹ quoting Shakespeare:

Oh, I know Hamlet. And what he said with irony, I say with conviction: “What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason! How infinite in faculties. In form, and moving, how express and admirable. In action, how like an angel… In apprehension, how like a god!”

Irony or conviction – your call.
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1) From ST:TNG – Hide And Q 11/23/87