JFK on the pace of technological change

I happened to be watching the JFK Moon Speech last night, and I was struck not by his famous lines ("We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard") but by the fact that a politician was using his bully pulpit to actually try to explain history and science, and to be thoughtful and inspiring about the implications.

Is it just me, or does no one, least of all politicians, do this any more?

No man can fully grasp how far and how fast we have come, but condense, if you will, the 50,000 years of man¹s recorded history in a time span of but a half-century. Stated in these terms, we know very little about the first 40 years, except at the end of them advanced man had learned to use the skins of animals to cover them.

Then about 10 years ago, under this standard, man emerged from his caves to construct other kinds of shelter. Only five years ago man learned to write and use a cart with wheels. Christianity began less than two years ago. The printing press came this year, and then less than two months ago, during this whole 50-year span of human history, the steam engine provided a new source of power.  Newton explored the meaning of gravity.

Last month electric lights and telephones and automobiles and airplanes became available. Only last week did we develop penicillin and television and nuclear power, and now if America's new spacecraft succeeds in reaching Venus, we will have literally reached the stars before midnight tonight.

I have tried to put forward a similar position on Web 2.0, which basically, we developed two days ago.
As JFK says

This is a breathtaking pace, and such a pace cannot help but create new ills as it dispels old, new ignorance, new problems, new dangers.