My understanding is that the Artemis 2 launch had 10 million concurrent viewers. I’ll take everyone’s word for it that this is impressive. But that still feels pretty small to me. What does a World Cup final get? Over a billion people I imagine. I shouldn’t look at the past through rose coloured glasses of course. During the Apollo 11 Moon Landing era, there were few channels, presumably leading to a greater feeling of coherence, allowing for those shared national/global broadcasts.
Now we have infinite, well, everything. There is no “default” event anymore.
But I can’t help but be a little sad. And that sadness is starting to turn into irritation, which means I am very close to making an argument.
The conventional explanation points to economic pressure, information overload, and a media system locked into crisis cycles. People have less attention for distant projects like space exploration.
Yeah, I get that.
But the same people who are supposedly too overwhelmed to care about a crewed mission to the Moon will spend hours following a niche YouTuber, a mid-tier sports rivalry, or a slow-moving online drama that has no stakes beyond reputation and entertainment.
The environment explains part of this, although people still find considerable attention for subjects that matter to them.
We say we value knowledge and discovery. We also carry devices that give us immediate access to remarkable technical achievements, then use the same devices to scroll past them.
The convenient story is that modern life has made this inevitable. Too busy, too distracted, too saturated. But that story just doesn’t ring true to me.
We often choose things that require little background knowledge or patience. Eventually that preference affects what media organizations and public institutions bother explaining. Subjects that cannot be presented immediately as entertainment or outrage receive less attention, even when the public consequences are substantial.
Digital priesthood · Interface friction · Living a smaller life