What do you want to do when you grow up? In generations past, it was common for kids to say astronaut, explorer. Society used to be enamoured by shuttle launches and captivated by exploring the world and universe. In recent years this has changed though. The explorers of National Geographic and astronaut of NASA hold a very small share of the collective mind space today.

An interesting thing happened last week. Apple released a new product. It is both hailed as the next revolution in personal computing and derided as a useless, redundant piece of technology. Also, the President of the United States delivered the State of the Union. Barack Obama delivered his first State of the Union. Everyone was talking about the iPad. No one was talking about the speech.