This book, Stephen J. Pyne's Voyager: Seeking Newer Worlds in the Third Great Age of Discovery, is intriguing. He compares this outer space probe to the seagoing expeditions of the 16th and 18th centuries. They were all inspired by the same motives. Glenn Reynolds reviews it in the WSJ.

I've always thought it was interesting that the dawn of the computer age reintroduced such terms as Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator.