All those satellites in orbit, why? So HBO can broadcast ever more prurient, self-destructive garbage into homes. Sure, it is convenient for my wife to be able to call during my 45 minute commute (which is the only time of day I am not two feet from a phone) but is is absolutely transforming? No.
The current generation thinks that because they can please their own appetites quicker, the world has been transformed.
We actively work against true transformation. Nuclear power could have transformed electrical power generation, but we have made that technology practically illegal. The interstate highway system, railroad, power lines, cars, name pretty much any truly transformative technology and then picture it being invented today. It would go nowhere.
Millions of people just like you would look down their noses and ask a rhetorical "Why?". We are forever locked in today because we no longer have the ability to picture tomorrow. Every new technology and idea can only be imagined in terms of our daily lives right now. We can't picture our world or our lives changing anymore.
I'm not sure why you focus on HBO and cellular telephone technology in your post. For one thing, HBO existed as a cable TV station long before satellite television existed, and cell phones use terrestrial signal transmission technology, not satellites. Secondly, satellite technology goes far beyond personal convenience and entertainment. In my business I use global-positioning data, mapping and satellite imagery for major civil engineering projects. And my clients use this technology for things like crop yield analysis, measuring forest growth over time, and tracking fleets of vehicles all over North America.
I'm not going to sit here and say that YOU are "a case study in what's wrong," but if you think satellite technology is all about convenience and entertainment than I'm going to suggest that maybe you don't know enough about the subject to weigh in on it here.
We are forever locked in today because we no longer have the ability to picture tomorrow.
What kind of gibberish is this? It sounds like something you'd find in a political speech by a candidate with an IQ of around 90. I don't know about you, but I "picture tomorrow" all the time. And the irony is that what really makes it most difficult to "picture tomorrow" is that on a personal level, we have already solved almost every problem that faced the human race up until the last 50-100 years. That's a nice problem to have, isn't it?