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Q: So man walked on the moon. How does that impact your daily life?Pretty directly, and yours too, and not in the ways you’d think of.No, it didn’t give us Velcro or Tang or the Space Pen, private industry gave us those. And it didn’t give us weather and communication satellites, the government gave us those, and would have regardless.Here's what it did give us: A generation of engineers. A transformation of process automation, as 460,000 people brought tight-tolerance manufacturing, developed during the missile programs of the 1950s, to every single subcontractor to contribute to Apollo, and through market forces, to their competitors.The moon landing didn’t give us computers. It gave us better computers a decade or more earlier. It didn’t give us smartphones, it gave us the global manufacturing talent for creating smartphones. And IKEA flat-pack furniture that goes together right the first time. And cars that drive 100,000 miles without a tuneup. And soda cans that use 80% less material and cost half as much. And a thousand thousand other things that make our lives better, that we never see or think about.When was the last time you even remembered that mankind took that "giant leap"?Every single day, though I’m a scifi author, so I’m not representative.The Apollo program was a crazy expensive, stereotypically over-the-top American program, but it gave us something bigger, something less tangible and more vital than any product or commercial advance.Sure, we went to the moon to beat the Ruskies. But really, deep down, we went because we could. We looked up, as a nation, as a species, and for the first time in all the times there have been, we saw another world and thought “I bet we can go there.” So we went.We walked in the dust of another world, and in peace for all mankind.The achievement is the Great Pyramids of the modern world, the adventure of all lifetimes. And for those who are truly human, who value life for more than merely love or money or survival, but for living, it was only the beginning.

Q: What are the most influential factors in causing the absolute poverty in the world to be halved in modern times? Is it attributed to specific technological leaps?A: Fossil fuel consumption = extremely affordable energy

Both work. Either is fine. I'm trying to think of a distinction, and concluding that I would have to manufacture one. That is, nobody would get the distinction; I can imagine a difference, but the difference would not be communicated to any audience.Here it is anyway: If I say, "What are people like there?" I am suggesting that those same people would be different somewhere else.Q: What was Joe like while watching Laurence of Arabia?A: He was thirsty.Q: What was he like while watching Waterworld?A: Just bored.Q: How was he in Florida?A: He was a couch potato, because it was either winter or incredibly hot.Q: What was he like in Colorado?A: Very athletic. Climbed a lot of mountains. Moved to Boulder and fancied himself a hipster because he burned his mouth.Q: Say what?A: He liked coffee before coffee was cool.And now we do the other phrasing: "What are people there like?"Makes me think of creoles: transplants, things from somewhere else that grow differently in their new homes.For this we visit Larry Nivin's known space:Q: Ksin: What are people there like?A: Furry. And aggressive. Aggressive furrys.Q: How aggressive?A: "You scream and you leap."Q: Spoiler alert?A: Yeah, sure.Q: Ringworld: What are people there like?A: Kinky, some of them, in ways I don't even want to think about.Q: This whole neighberhood of the galaxy: What are people here like?A: We're all the same: We don't like tree-of-life root until we're old enough that we can't resist it.So, there's the distinction. But I made it up. I don't know whether anyone else will get it even after reading this post. And I'm confident that nobody would get it if I just used one of the two phrasings in a paragraph about something else.It's fair to say that the meanings are indistinguishable.