A note to friends at NASA CoLab

I'd sent the following in email to a dear friend (I won't name names, let's just call him "Andrew" for now) who continually counter-balances my Andy Rooney-ish tired crankiness with youthful optimism and intelligence. He was an early mentor on what was to eventually become alonovo.com and helped connect me to some amazing people at CivicSpace Labs. While I'm not deluded (enough, yet) to think that my notes are all that interesting, he encouraged me to blog this, so here it is ...

The more I think of some of the discussions we had at the Thai restaurant with your parents the more I understand how badly society needs to look up into the sky and dream about what is possible again.

The science and technology that once gave all people hope --that if we could walk on the moon, anything is attainable as a society or within the framework of our own lives --has taken a backseat to war, corporate profit and bling.

While the current administration hasn't totally cast us back into the dark ages yet, they have certainly diminished our educational infrastructure through lack of funding (beginning with the Reagan years). Early childhood education is where the spark of exploration (the desire for knowledge and understanding) begins with well resourced schools, talented, caring teachers and parents that have not totally been beaten down by a system of economic tyranny.

There is mountain of work for the NASA CoLab team ahead, (ironic we originally met in Mountain View?) however the intellect and optimism from that group holds great promise.