Sir Arthur C Clarke 90th Birthday ReflectionsCaption WindowSir Arthur C Clarke 90th Birthday Reflections December 2007  Released by Personal Office of Sir Arthur C Clarke Colombo, Sri Lanka Together with TVE Asia Pacific www.tveap.org Hello. This is Arthur Clarke, speaking to you from my home in Colombo, Sri Lanka. As I approach my 90th birthday, my friends are asking me how it feels to have completed 90 orbits around the Sun. Well, I actually don’t feel a day older than 89. Of course, some things remind me that I’ve indeed qualified as a senior citizen. As Bob Hope once said, “you know you’re getting old, when the candles cost more than the cake.” I’m now perfectly happy to step aside and watch how things evolve. But there’s also a sad side to living so long. Most of my contemporaries and all friends have already departed. However, they left behind many fond memories for me to recall. I now spend a good part of my day dreaming of times past, present and future. As I try to survive on 15 hours’ sleep a day, I have plenty of time to enjoy vivid dreams. Being completely wheelchaired doesn’t stop my mind from roaming the universe, on the contrary. Being completely wheelchaired doesn’t stop my mind from roaming the universe, on the contrary.
OK In my time, I’ve been very fortunate to have seen many of my dreams come true. Growing up in the 1920s and 30s, I never expected to see so much happen in the span of a few decades. Well, we, space cadets of the British Interplanetary Society, spent all our spare time discussing space travel. But we didn’t imagine that it lay in our own near future. I still can’t quite believe that we’ve just marked the 50th anniversary of the Space Age. We’ve accomplished a great deal in that time, but the Golden Age of Space is only just beginning. After half a century of government-sponsored efforts, we are now witnessing the emergence of commercial space flight. Over the next 50 years, thousands of people will travel to Earth orbit, and then, to the Moon and beyond. Space travel and space tourism will one day become almost as commonplace as flying to exotic destinations on our own planet. Things are also changing rapidly in many other areas of science and technology. To give just one example, the world’s mobile phone coverage recently passed 50% or 3.3 billion subscriptions. This was achieved in just a little over a quarter of a century since the first cellular network was set up. The mobile phone has revolutionized human communications and is turning humanity into an endlessly chattering global family. What does this mean for us as a species? Communications, technologies are necessary but not sufficient for us humans to get along with each other. This is why we still have many disputes and conflicts in the world. Technologies’ tools help us to gather and disseminate information. But we also need qualities like tolerance and compassion to achieve greater understanding between peoples and nations. I have great faith in optimism as a guiding principle, if only because it offers us the opportunity of creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. So, I hope that we’ve learnt something from the most barbaric century in history, the 20th. I would like to see us overcome our tribal divisions and begin to think and act as if we were one family. That would be real globalization. As I complete 90 orbits, I have no regrets and no more personal ambitions. But if I may be allowed just three wishes, they would be these: Firstly, I would like to see some evidence of extraterrestrial life; I’ve always believed that we’re not alone in the universe, but we’re still waiting for ET to call us or give us some kind of sign. We have no way of guessing when this might happen. I hope sooner rather than later. Secondly, I would like to see us quit our current addiction to oil and adopt clean energy resources. For over a decade, I’ve been monitoring various new energy experiments, but they’ve yet to produce commercial scale results. Climate change has now added a new sense of urgency. Our civilization depends on energy, but we can’t allow oil and coal to slowly bake our planet. My third wish is one closer to home. I’ve been living in Sri Lanka for 50 years, and half that time I’ve been a sad witness to the bitter conflict that divides my adopted country. I dearly wish to see lasting peace established in Sri Lanka as soon as possible. But I’m aware that peace cannot just be wished: it requires a great deal of hard work, courage and persistence. I’m sometimes asked how I would like to be remembered. I’ve had a diverse career as a writer, underwater explorer, space promoter, and science popularizer. Of all these, I want to be remembered most as a writer, one who entertained readers and, hopefully, stretched their imaginations as well. I find that another English writer, who coincidentally also spent much of his life in the East, expressed this very well. So let me end with these words of Rudyard Kipling. “If I have given you delight by aught that I have done, let me lie quiet in that night which shall be yours anon.” “And for the little, little span the dead are borne in mind, seek not to question other than the books I leave behind.” This is Arthur Clarke, saying thank you and goodbye from Colombo.
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Sri Lankabhimanya Sir Arthur Charles Clarke (16 December 1917 – 19 March 2008) was a British science fiction author, inventor, and futurist, most famous for the novel 2001: A Space Odyssey.
He emigrated to Sri Lanka in 1956 largely to pursue his interest in scuba diving, and lived there until his death. He was knighted by the Queen in 1998, and was awarded Sri Lanka's highest civil honour, Sri Lankabhimanya, in 2005.
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