Science as a Candle in the Dark

"Science is more than a body of knowledge; it is a way of thinking. I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time—when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness."

~~~ Carl Sagan ~~~

The Matrix to me can represent that point in time when science needed to really get into bed with business and government to continue its progress.

Science these days has a habit of working in places only the rich can reach!! That doesn't necessarily mean its rewards are restricted, but there are things such as intellectual property rights and the real issue of security, be it personal or international.

But free media and open markets tend to promote information sharing and opportunity where possible. Appropriate transparency, rule of law and its fair and equal enforcement, equal rights etc etc allow this to exist and flourish, and I'd have to say the US was/is one of the leading lights in this regard. But not all information can be free. I reckon if anyone tells you that then it usually means they either have something to hide (ie a distraction) or nothing of value.

Science I think benefits the most from free access to information, but at the cutting edge where costs are high its advancement needs to work with business otherwise I think society will settle into some middle ground, something like the end of the 20th Century perhaps. I don't know enough about manufacturing and materials science to know how much science and tech goes into making a smart phone these days, but they are amazing kit which could not have been built 20 years ago. Who owns the machines runs the world perhaps!

To any one , difrent can seem a lot of things. Understanding come in many forms. For me... Science can ... Be a way of thinking ... And is in my own life but that's not lol that exist. The ability to see beyond the "only one" mentality looses the labels of sects and gives it redefinition. To find difrent knowledge avaloble and not automatically deminish others is my goal some times. So when the people turn to themselves to govern it's the companies and gov't who begin to deminish , not the individual. I should say it ... Can be as such in some cases , we are in agreeable company absolute is never an option for a Jedi! My own opinion ... Sounds lot like " don't heal your self dont turn from us type of mentality. Mynownnpersonal opinion. I'm good on that

Unfortunately Dr. Sagan is not here to speak for himself, so it would be a tad unfair to respond to something he wrote. Instead I would like to respond to you, Strudel, but in that OP there is nothing of your own to respond to. I do not know whether you agree or disagree with that quote or any part of it or to what extent or why, nor was any context given to discuss it within. Are you trying to say something, and if you are, what is it?
And if you aren't, then I suppose you started it to get our take on - for lack of any more material to work with - the content of that quote. As hinted at with the topic title, the quote is from Demon-Haunted World by Carl Sagan, published in 1995. Now in terms of matters of education which the quote speaks to, this might as well be an entire generation in the past. In terms of information and computer technology, a major change of the nature of the internet occurred some eight years later, coinciding with when the first home PCs with a 64-bit architecture were starting to be marginally affordable. My point here is that Carl Sagan was mistaken about the poor state of US education in the same way Adam Smith was mistaken about the effects of unregulated free market economics, not so much because what the gentlemen said about the respective subjects was unrepresentative of what they saw in their day but because neither could have expected, much less predicted the sheer magnitude of the growth that was just around the corner, ready to move in. There is at this point no going back from this, no reverting to the dark ages, no matter how loud those desperate factions that want to go back are crying on their death beds.
The question remaining is whether or to what extent we are willing to defend our idols, excuse what little flaws we find in them. Perhaps this is yet another case of "brilliant men can be wrong, too", though at times it seems that this mantra is repeated here so often that one might think we are trying to convince ourselves to not listen to those from whom we otherwise could learn so much...