signs of intelligent life

I was randomly flipping channels during a late-night bout of insomnia earlier this week, and I came across the ending credits of 2001: A Space Odyssey. Funny how less than a half-century ago, we humans presumed that we'd use our burgeoning technical prowess for outbound exploration. '60s and '70s favorites like Space Odyssey, Star Trek, and Star Wars -- backed by a virtual catalog of Isaac Asimov science fiction stories and an entire litany of Charlton Heston cult classics -- simply took it for granted that the dawn of the 21st Century would see humankind hyperdriven into the outermost reaches of distant galaxies with geeky, unpronounceable names.

Fast-forward to 2009, and Mr. Heston's alter-egos might be stunned by the state of affairs: A series of oft-disgraced shuttle launches and grounded attempts at lift-off; peppered with the occasional unmanned space probe sending filmy, nondescript images back from Jupiter (could be a man, could be a funky-looking boulder).

This is the final frontier we'd fearlessly hoped to conquer? Well, it's not a total wash. We simply took humankind's astounding technical aptitude and turned it inward ... so that now when we sit down on a couch, with a console, or at a keyboard, we're controlling things like Tivo or the Wii. We're posting our up-to-the-second state of being on Facebook, MySpace, or LinkedIn. We're tweeting on Twitter or texting nonstop (OMG, RU there?) while uploading live video feed onto YouTube.

Now certainly, we've also made huge leaps in medicine and research. But pardon me for pointing this out: Does it strike you that we're using a disproportionate percentage of these amazing technical advances to turn the spotlight on ... well, ourselves? Because it seems like a lot of these transmissions (including, some might argue, this one) imply a near-frightening fascination with making ourselves feel known, recognized, important, even celebrated.

Is that really so wrong? Well, it's not the question of right or wrong I'm debating. What I'm simply doing is observing what we all look like. Collectively, as a society. You give intrepid young minds a mirror, they'll often figure out how to create fire. You give babies a mirror, they can spend an amazingly long time just gazing into it.

When God regards his children -- collectively, mind you -- I wonder which age group we fall into. But mostly, I wonder what He thinks about how we're using the tools we've been given.

"I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do."
H-A-L 9000, in 2001: A Space Odyssey