2 thoughts on “With new ‘Cosmos’ on horizon, makers of original look back

  1. What a great article! I remember watching Cosmos on KCET as a young radio station engineer in Southern
    California. The program inspired me not only because I was a geek and loved
    science and math and electronics and science fiction but also because I saw how
    he took these incredibly complex ideas and visions and made them understandable
    to people that weren’t into all the science and technology.
    Throughout my career, I have made it a point to be able to explain technology to non-technical
    people the way Carl Sagan did. It has helped me professionally in that I can explain to general managers
    and accountants what a piece of technology does and why we need it without having
    their eyes glaze over. I spent the better part of a year explaining digital
    television to the people of Iowa at libraries, service club meetings and on a
    one hour television program that we produced here at IPTV and distributed
    nationally. All of it while keeping in mind how Sagan would make the
    information interesting and understandable.

    When doing presentations I often use a quote from Carl
    Sagan:

    “We live in a society exquisitely dependent on
    science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and
    technology.”

    I find it to be as true today as when he originally
    said it.

    Thanks for a great article and look back on one of the
    great successes for public television.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *