SOME TIME AGO...

Some time ago, in an interview motivated by the 50th. anniversary of CIOVI, the reporter asked me what the current absence of reports of presumable UFOs could be attributed to.

I replied that it seems to me that one of the causes for that was that the people have lost the capability to be amazed, as Hourcade would say.

What I wanted to mean is that nowadays no one is “amazed” to be seeing something strange hovering in the sky.

The difference to what happened decades ago, is that currently the eventual witnesses automatically try to “identify” what they are seeing with something that is known. Therefore, it any longer causes astonishment, whenever before it was seeing –as Hourcade would say— with awe.

One of the reasons for this is --without any doubt-- the permanent work of disclosure of the UFO subject by serious investigators and responsible specialized groups.

Another reason could be the quick progress of technology, so that we are permanently exposed to new devices that come to be part of our daily life.

It happens frequently that when we get to be used to some of them, suddenly they are replaced for more advanced ones.

Those of us who have lived enough, have known the times in which an invention had a prolonged useful life. Then, those of us who had access to those advances, tried to “understand” them, and even we tried to fix them if they failed.

Currently this is no longer possible. Technology has advanced to a point that to be able to do something like that, we have to take a course, so we simply use them.

We have become “users” of technology and then nothing new seems to amaze us.

This that happens at a household level also happens at a general level.

Sophisticated airplans, missiles, silent helicopters, satellites, etc. the list would be a never-ending one.

We are permanently informed about new scientific discoveries and many times it is impossible for us to “digest” all of them. So, we are satisfied to be informed, and we turn our attention to other things.

Confronting this reality, it is no strange that in general, no one is astonished for something that could be hovering or flying in the sky and that has no resemblance to anything already known.

Those of us that in the Seventies enjoyed the TV series Star Trek, looked amazed –among other things- to a little device used by Captain Kirk to communicate from the surface of some planet with his ship. It was very similar to a cellular phone, with cover included, that made a particular sound when it was opened.

Nowadays, any one of us can have a cellular device that besides being a phone has a lot more functions that in the Seventies we couldn’t even imagine.

Poor Captain Kirk! His cellular became obsolete…

Germán Vázquez - January 2010

Note: Germán S. Vázquez, a UAPSG member, was a co-founder of the Center for UFO Investigation, (Centro de Investigación de Objetos Voladores Inidentificados – C.I.O.V.I.) in Montevideo, Uruguay, on April 29, 1958.
Since then, he has been an active field investigator, student and reader of the best material produced about the UFO subject.
With his personal experience and expertise, Mr.Vázquez has all the skills to be a serious and reliable Consultant on UFO matters.