Hacker News Reader

Comment by hcurtiss | Hacker News Reader

I, for one, will get nothing out of Cameron traveling to the bottom of the ocean that drop cameras have not already produced. I feel the same way about sending humans to Mars.

Of course, I'm also the guy who went to the Grand Canyon and thought to myself, "meh, that's about what it looked like on my TV."

View on HN

> I, for one, will get nothing out of Cameron traveling to the bottom of the ocean that drop cameras have not already produced.

This is true only if you assume that the advances being made in materials and technology will not have applications beyond deep water manned submersibles.

As a comparison: Do you contend that you got nothing out of the development of manned space flight?

I had the same reaction as a kid to the Grand Canyon, that it looked like all of the postcards. I think as I get older there's something else about that, that reality's greatness can't be comprehended in the same way as other things that are more human specifically, like other people, maybe? So I mean while it was a let down, the fact that on the surface it seemed like a let down has not been a let down in its own right.

We need to think bigger, more long term. You might not get anything out of going deep or into space, but imagine colonizing the oceans or Mars at some point in the future.

Every corporation and many home users have backups of their important data. How long can we flirt total system failure without an offsite backup? When the failover happens and our disaster recovery system works, our new generations will thank us.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com