Living Multiple Lives and the Acceleration of Knowledge in the 21st Century

Born in 1950 made me a baby boomer, a part of a population explosion as the world woke up from the second world war which had just kick started the greatest technological developments in all of history.
No one asked if there was enough money to do what was humanly possible in war time. If the raw materials were available and with inventiveness not restricted by Keynesian economics if it could be done it was done.
With national survival as motivation what was achieved in six years was nothing short of staggering. With everyone pulling together the production figures reach levels never believed possible.
Looking back, just six years with no financial restraints gave my generation the ability to live several lives.
All the varied things I have been able to do have only been possible from 1945 onwards.
As a private pilot the war effort gave me new aircraft design with reliable engines that were safe. Navigation aids for radio direction. VHF radio for contact with air traffic control. Gyroscopes were making artificial horizon, instruments for flying in clouds. Radar, GPS, even moving maps came via computing another second world war development.
In 1990 I set out to sail around the world in a fifty foot steel yacht. Again prior to the war it would have been only a rich man that could build a twenty six ton yacht. In this vessel I had a depth sounder unheard of before 1939. The war gave me accurate charts. GPS and map on my computer laptop made navigation so safe. My H.F. radio meant I was always able to contact maritime control by skipping radio signals off the ionosphere.
It was rocketry developed by the Germans that was the start of going into space. How blessed to have an Iridium satellite phone incase of medical emergency.
Television was also an offshoot of radar both required a cathode ray tube
All the strange new materials. Plastics, rayon, fiberglass have only available to the ordinary man since 1950. I used Dacron sail cloth when building hang gliders in 1974.
T61636 structural aluminum I used in ultra light aircraft and then carbon fiber when building a fiber glass home built aircraft.
Could any working man prior to the war build with any of these high tech. materials?
In sixty years I have traveled to 31 countries. Sailed in command 54 thousand nautical miles. Flown 450 hours in my own light aircraft, countless thousands of miles by jet aircraft.
Had access to medical technology that has photographed my intestinal tract, scanned how thick the plaque is in my heart arteries and given me graduated lenses in my glasses.
Now I have access to a thousand libraries at the push of a button. Over a thousand CD's of music. The ability to make a high definition movie and do full editing on a home computer.
Take high quality photos which have no processing fee.
Drive the safest cars yet made.
I have never known hunger or danger.

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