Found among the files. Stuffed into the corners. Crumpled and stained with coffee. These pages hint at when and where our secrets began.
The year is 1962. Our world is waiting for something new,
bulging at the seams.
It is the
age of superpowers, a chess match between the United States and the Soviet
Union. In May of 1960 a US spy
plane was shot down in Soviet airspace broiling tensions. The pilot is still in captivity. Last year the Bay of Pigs invasion fell
flat and embarrassed the newly elected President Kennedy. As the construction of the Berlin Wall
divided Germany, the Soviet Union sent the first man into orbit and claimed
technological superiority. Neither side will budge. Today, the game involves
the entire world without a checkmate in sight. What is the next move?
Is there a game changer, a single swipe that guarantees success?
It is the age of
commercialization. AT & T
launched Telstar, the world’s first communication satellite, and television has
become king. In the comfort of our
living rooms we see what to buy to make life better. Everything is for sale; it just takes the right pitch.
It is the Space Age. The Boeing 707, launched 4 years ago,
shrunk the world. Britain and
France promise to develop a supersonic passenger plane to cross the Atlantic in
3 hours. Mariner II reached Venus
and sent us the first signals from another planet. The goal is for man to set foot on the moon that luminescent
ball in the night sky.
There is another age, one
that most people are less aware of.
It is the age of agriculture, or as we in the industry call it, the
Green Revolution. Food problems have
haunted mankind since the beginning.
The food needs of growing populations were always met by expanding
cultivated land. Not 50 years ago
the intellects of the world foresaw mass starvation. But investments in scientific research have led to dramatic
breakthroughs.
The story
of English wheat is typical. This
ancient crossbreed of wild wheat and goat grass became the first mass scale
agricultural product. Farmed by
hand and planted once a year it yielded a meager crop. Over 10,000 years humans developed the
plow, the seed drill, and rotation crops so that yields increased 4 fold. Today,
new plant breeds, inorganic fertilizers, and modern pesticides have tripled
that in 20 years. Today, industrial countries have eliminated the threat of
starvation.
The world is on the verge of
a new age; the Age of Tomorrow.
Let us project ahead to an age of prosperity in which technology ushers
in an era of leisure. With new
textiles, new building materials, new colors, new flavor enhancements, new hair
products, new fuels nothing is impossible. Never before has humanity made such progress in understanding
the world. We stand on the edge of
tomorrow.
