Opinion: Innovations and science fiction

A little more than a year ago we lost our fearless leader, publisher and owner, Chuck Doud. Those of us left behind have done our best to keep The Madera Tribune going. Newspapers have become an old-fashioned way to disseminate news. Earlier generations, such as the Silent Generation (born 1928-1945), Baby Boomers (1946-1964), Generation X (1965-1980) and even many Millennials (1981-1996) grew up reading newspapers.

The advent of cable news channels, personal computers and online news sources has made for a much smaller newspaper reading audience. Thanx to all our readers, we appreciate the continued support of the community.

Charges of systemic racism in America have been in the news a lot. Has anyone else noticed how the ethnic makeup of families in television commercials has changed in the last few years? It is as if Madison Avenue is trying to compensate for years of white only, heterosexual, TV families.

I don’t think of the difference between people in terms of race. We are all members of the human race. Thinking less of a person based on their ancestry is so wrong. I attended James Monroe Elementary School K-6. The student body was composed of all manner of ethnicities. It was like the Sunday school song, “Jesus Loves the Little Children, red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in his sight…”

We all played together in a near colorblind existence.

I am also against the term race to describe someone’s heritage or ethnicity. We are all members of the human race. It would be a real tragedy if the only time we felt we were all humans was when we were invaded by aliens from another planet.

The thought that planet earth is the only one to have intelligent life on it, shows an arrogance that I find laughable. Being raised on television programs such as “Lost in Space,” and movies such as “The Day the Earth Stood Still,” I have no problem believing that some of the millions of stars in the heavens may very well be inhabited by living, thinking beings.

History has taught us that the civilization with the most highly developed technology tends to be victorious in a confrontation. Could Earth withstand a confrontation from beings able to travel thousands of lightyears across the galaxy? I don’t think we would fare much better than the Native American did against the Spaniards or the British when they invaded the “New World.”

There has been a great deal of innovations based on ideas put forth in Science Fiction. I’ve read where the idea for flip-phones came from the communicators on “Star Trek.”

I’m excited to see what inventions the next ten years will bring.

Long days and pleasant nights, have a blessed weekend.

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Readers may contact Tami Jo Nix by emailing tamijonix@gmail.com or following @TamiJoNix on Twitter.