On June 21st, Michael Melvill became the first civilian to reach outer space in a privately developed vessel. “Space Ship One” as it was called, was the first product of a well financed venture funded by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen. My heart throbs with envy for this man. There is much buzz surrounding this event — people are calling it a Milestone; a turning point in the history of space exploration. The New York Times quotes one FAA official as saying “The flight today opens a new chapter in history, making space access within the reach of ordinary citizens.”

I have always had a great passion to be a part of space exploration. I would not however, have taken any part in this venture.

It is evident that NASA and other federalized space exploration agencies have lost significant momentum over the past three decades. At the age of 10 I visited Space Camp, where they reported predictions of manned trips to Mars by the year 2000. Four years later at Space Academy the prediction had been bumped to 2005-2010. Ask NASA today and they won’t even offer an estimate. Our most impressive accomplishment to date, the International Space Station is the first man-made ’star’ viewable in the night sky. It has been all but abandoned by NASA because they lack reliable transportation to get there.

Perhaps a swell of success and growth from a private space industry will give NASA and the others a kick in the pants, but at what cost? There is a conspicuous lack of explorers in the modern world. Capitalism and Ego have driven human curiosity into a dark cave. The debased character of IT is not the only example of this. With few exceptions, medical researchers have stopped looking for cures and now search only for the best treatments. Where’s the money in curing someone? They’ve turned life-threateners such as HIV/AIDS and many forms of cancer into chronic illnesses and billion dollar industries.

I believe there are still explorers in us. We can still be the people who sat quietly in awe of the first men on the moon. We can still be the people who cried when we lost Challenger. If private American companies are allowed to set the pace in space travel, pursuits such as science, medicine and the search for extraterrestrial life will be replaced with orbiting Carnival Cruise liners and Hard Rock Casinos on the moon.

For years computers made it easier for people to do their jobs. In many cases computers have eliminated jobs completely. You won’t find an argument against efficiency here. Hard, smart workers recognize good tools and use them to their benefit. Computers are no different — they may not be the best tool since the cotton gin, but they’re certainly in the running. So why are so many people skeptical, frustrated and even angry with their IT departments? Surely we aren’t failing that bad. Its probably a mix of things, but in large part it is due to the fact that many people are what I call ‘lazy thinkers.’

Give a hard worker a good tool and they will use it to work harder. Give a lazy thinker a good tool and they’ll complain that it doesn’t do everything they need it to. For these people the switch from wanting computers to help with their job to wanting computers to do their job is almost involuntary. In their defense most lazy thinkers are actually very diligent employees; they merely tend towards an overreliance on the tools they’re given. Nevertheless this frame of mind causes significant detriment to technology efforts. Realistic requirements cannot be provided by lazy thinkers. When IT departments attempt to reply with the voice of reason it is often misinterpreted as “IT trying to drive the business.”

Computers being such complicated devices suffer significant exposure to this condition. What’s worse is that this problem is starting to spill over onto how people view their IT departments. Lazy thinkers start to lean on IT departments for general analysis and problem solving. This is understandable because IT departments are usually staffed with very bright people who like solving problems and have sufficient knowledge of the business. The ‘T’ in IT stands for Technology. IT build tools to help their company do analysis and solve problems. The only problem an IT department should be trying to solve are problems with their tools.

This will prove to be a very difficult trend to push back against. You won’t make friends by calling people lazy or giving them more work. Still, architects need to remain dogmatic about system design and focus more on innovation than on keeping people happy. Be less like short-order cooks and more like accomplished chefs. Indeed innovation is really the only way to produce the next generation of productivity tools. IT should definitely not be the only experts in the house. The roles of Business Analysts in corporations need to be significantly expanded: into groups within each department or perhaps even into free standing Business Analysis departments. Serving the dual purpose severely dilutes IT’s effectiveness and tarnishes its image.

Memorial Day weekend. Tampa’s Ybor City. A good friend and I are enjoying ourselves at a small Irish pub hidden on the second floor of an old-looking building. From below us the bass rhythms of some obnoxiously overplayed hip-hop song shakes our barstools. We’re having a great time. In fact, everybody is having a great time. The liberally freckled tomboy Irish bartendress is arm-wrestling with a large patron, and winning. At the far end of the bar a soon-to-be-married bachelorette is standing on the bar asking if anyone has a condom. The other bartender, sporting a sharp kelly-green St.Patty’s day Red Sox jersey is possibly the most drunk person in the joint. I’ll order my next cocktail from him. This place is perfection, and this scene is timeless. Nothing other than our individual faces separate us from counterparts having the same good time 50 years ago.

It is my curse at times like these to end up thinking about computers. In this case pondering how noticeably absent they are. The cash registers are the old kind with the mechanical display and typewriter keys. There must be a credit card reader somewhere but I can’t see it. No one at the bar is on their cell phone either; apparently there is life without mobile communications.

And like I said, this place is perfect.

The automobile and the telephone changed the way people lived, not life itself. Telephones kept family members in closer contact but didn’t make them love each other more. Automobiles opened the landscape to the casual traveler but didn’t make us more eager explorers. That’s the funny thing about people - as much as we claim to be constantly searching for the meaning of life, I think we might already have it. We know how to be happy and do it very naturally. We don’t need anytime anyplace access to AOL chat rooms in order to participate in a healthy, enlightening social event.

Computers will not, can not, should not change life. They’re tools like the telephone and distractions like the television. They’re the next generation of calculators and text books but they’ll never replace them. They’re a new and exciting way to make friends but they’ll never replace them. They’re a fantastic new medium for visual arts but they’ll never replace hand-drawn animation.

Maybe if we stop trying to make computers do things they’re not meant for they’ll start doing more things that they are.