> I miss the innocence of the time, however amply undeserved. But I was young myself then.
I see things slightly differently.
Big failures whose practical and theoretical lessons and new wisdoms are then put to use, more carefully, ambitions unabated, teach things, and take technology to unexpected places.
But big failures, institutionalized as big failures, become devastating craters of resources, warding off further attempts for years or decades … but only after the fact. That didn’t need to be their legacy.
The abatement of American ambitions is something the world has long, not to say desperately, awaited.
Not that Americans should not aspire; indeed, the world has long loved us best when we dream most generously the utopias of which we forever will dream as long as we call ourselves Americans. It's only that generosity, not the reverie, of which we've lately lost the habit.
Yes. Well, "tilting at," jousting specifically. The figure relates to the comical pointlessness of such an act; the windmill sail will in every case of course simply remove the lance from the rider and the rider from the saddle, and turn on heedlessly, as only a purblind or romantic fool could omit trivially to predict.
> You just don’t see as many romantic technological catastrophes like those anymore.
The 90s were a period of unparalleled economic surplus in the United States. There was more stupid money than at any other time and place in history, and stupid money always goes somewhere. Once that was tulips. This time it was this.
> I miss them!
I miss the innocence of the time, however amply undeserved. But I was young myself then.