Are the lasers of science fiction really what we want? People seem to only be interested in things that involve causing death or destruction, they focus on these aspects and ignore other possibilities as not so interesting because nothing explodes.
Lasers are a good example of this because they are used in so much of our everyday lives and yet the bit that everyone finds interesting is their potential as weapons. Lasers can be used for tattoo removal, letting someone rid their body of something they no longer want on it. They are also used in entertainment, allowing movies and computer games to brighten up our day.
Lasers can be used in surgery, to help someone beat a deadly illness, or to help a couple with infertility problems to have a child. They even get used to help people who need laser hair removal to let them feel better or laser eye surgery to let them see better.
More intriguing to people though, seems to be the idea of blowing things up, fighting monsters and aliens with massively powered beams of destruction. Is this really what we want to teach our children?
I would rather they learned how great a technological advance something like the laser is. How medical science has helped to improve and extend people’s lives using lasers. How laser fingerprint detection lets us catch criminals and reduce crime and all the other ways in which technology can help our lives rather than just making things go ‘boom’.