In the round-up of last week's news, I linked to another Neil Armstrong obituary from tried and true tech journalist George Leopold. William Watson doesn't cover tech, but who can look back at Neil Armstrong's life and the Apollo program and not wonder what our iPads and other gadgets would look like without the innovation and spin-offs the late sixties and early seventies spawned. And beyond the hardware, a whole generation of kids who looked to science and engineering as cool.
Watson is an economics prof, so here is his ode to geeks:
"Some people say Armstrong’s humility about being the first man to walk on the moon was well deserved, that he was merely the spearhead of a vast effort of tens of thousands of engineers, scientists and technicians, a triumph of the nerds, short-haired squares in a long-haired era, who wore ties with their short-sleeved white shirts and pocket protectors for their pens and slide rules. (Remember slide rules?)"
I encourage you to read the whole piece to get the rest of his thoughts on Neil and the other Armstrong who made headlines last week.
Read the rest of Watson's colum here:
http://www.ottawacitizen.com/life/Sadly+heroes+stay+shiny+bright/7152348/story.html#ixzz24qCilBkn