Comment by isthatafact
1 day ago
I cannot logic that out as a metaphor. The language is perfectly clear in its absurdity. Airplanes do not "manipulate" space or time, and they do not "leave distance annihilated" (which is such a nonsensical phrase anyway).
It honestly sounds like he got confused and mixed stuff he saw on Star Trek with reality.
However, I am willing to consider 2 extremely generous interpretations (maybe there are others):
1 -- He has zero understanding of technology and science, so technology like rocket engines is "magical" to him, in which case he is not qualified to be a director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy.
2 -- He wants to communicate to the world, possibly as a sort of boast or threat, that the USA has some secret UFO-like technology that it has not yet made public, in which case he is a total loon.
A trip that took a week now takes a day. A voice that was far is now near.
As I said, if you want to be more precise you would say that's a manipulation of our relationship with time/space, but (as flowery metaphorical language goes) this is hardly the first time someone has spoken like this about major technological change. Methinks you're being too literally-minded in your reading abilities.
With generosity like this, who needs malice? :-p
Even if we take the generous view that the science director is a poet who does not understand science enough to speak coherently about it (and hence the weird poetry containing misleading technical phrases), the situation is not normal.
With a non-scientist as science director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and the Science Advisor to the President, and the drastic cuts to science and research pushed by the white house, it seems likely that malice is involved.