First, SpaceX made history with the First-Ever Human Rocket Launch For NASA, as Forbes reported. Saturday’s launch was the first time since 2011 that humans had launched into orbit from U.S. soil. The Dragon shuttle did successfully dock at the International Space Station, and we recall when SpaceX was considered more or less a moonshot.

Tech has come of age, and with age comes responsibility.

Next, President Trump signed an Executive Order on Preventing Online Censorship, taking a major step in reining in the unchecked powers of Big Tech. In case you missed it, “It comes after Twitter on Tuesday moved for the first time to apply a fact-checking notice to tweets by the president on the subject of voter fraud,” the Wall Street Journal reported. This, despite the fact that Database Swells to 1,285 Proven Cases of Voter Fraud in America. Just last month, “officials with the U.S. Justice Department announced the successful conviction of a Philadelphia judge who’d stuffed ballot boxes for certain Democrat candidates during the 2014, 2015 and 2016 Democrat primary elections, Business & Politics reported, and as for the source – the story was not covered by the mainstream media, with the exception of Fox News.

This is a civil rights violation, as is Twitter’s – et als’ – selectively censoring people and opinions not in line with their agenda, shadow-banning and de-platforming users and in the case of YouTube and Periscope, withholding donations from fans. Which is restraint of trade, if not outright theft, pure and simple.

The fledgling platforms were initially protected under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, as they provided an open forum for people to express their opinions and they were not held responsible when their respective platforms were used as a forum for, say, child pornographers.

That was then, this is now. They’re no longer fledgling platforms but rather global town squares where a handful of anointeds wield unprecedented power over our very freedom of speech, what is and is not acceptable, and what the true facts are.

Regardless of whom the nation’s current Chief Executive is, this move was long overdue: how long have we been sounding the alarm about leaving betas in the C-suite, unchecked? Given free rein, they’ve demonstrated that they will unabashedly stretch those reins beyond the breaking point.

Censorship goes against the very tenets of this republic and our right to free speech. While the tech cabal – in this case most notably Twitter, Google/YouTube and Facebook – have been enjoying a liability shield based on their being neutral platforms, they’ve abused that protection and as a result, may well lose that shield. The Sword of Damocles is about to descend.

These two events should serve as a reminder that tech rose out of a promise of new beginnings, of disintermediating and of reimagining. Tech was founded by rebels and optimists who took moonshots. If anything, this past week reminded us that it’s time to put our eyes back on the prize and remember that we’re all here in our own ways to shoot for the stars rather than attempting to suck the air out of the conversation.

Onward and forward.