Tomgram: Alfred McCoy, How the Pentagon Snatched Innovation From the Jaws of Defeat
Posted by Alfred McCoy at 4:57pm, September 10, 2017.
In the early 1950s, my father ran a gas station on Governors Island, a military base in New York harbor. In those years, it would be my only encounter with the suburbs. And there, for maybe a dime on any Saturday afternoon, I could join the kids from military families at the local movie house for the usual Westerns or war movies preceded by either a Buck Rogers or Flash Gordon space adventure serial. Those films were old even then, but the future still looked remarkably new to me. They were my introduction to space and the wonders of the weaponry to someday be wielded there, including disintegrator pistols, flash rays, and other techno-advances in death and destruction.
http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176324/
