The friends who drove a bus behind the Iron Curtain (bbc.co.uk)

To be fair, it was already discovered, just not by white Cambridge students...

But I get the thought - there just was not so much communication and so much more limited understanding.

Perhaps we are safer world now, because of that increased communication.

Perhaps what bothers us now is finding out that everywhere is full of the same idiots :-)

James Webb will prove nobody nothing. Search Twitter thread by Foone who discussed there how many wonderful things humanity managed to pull off while waiting for James Webb to launch.

We still don't know much about some regions not that far: just think about the bottom of oceans, some caves all around, ... There is still much to discover! And for an average person, central Russia, central America, large parts of Australia, Greenland, ... are a huge mystery.

Yes the big picture has lost its power. It's part of the order now, something to keep up with as it gets developed.

The big picture guys from yesteryear are so focused on clearing out the old theories and are trying to nail in their own interpretations before they retire.

We need new princples to explore and the implications of a new branch of science or tech that will revitalize the world. I'm confident this century the very basics of something new will be laid out.

At least here in Europe knowledge of other countries, even your own, is in practice quite restricted to capitals, tourist hotspots. Travel is very destination focused, where in the past the journey played a larger role. I'm the only one in my circle that likes to take the car (even has one) and go explore my own backwoods, or set a faraway destination and see what I come across on the way there (and stop wherever I please, or even change destination along the way).

Maybe that's what off the beaten path is now: a path actually quite near.