A wonderful, optimistic view of the world!

I love the argument that America will survive the latest division like it has most others. And that the bias towards freedom will continue leading the way while the bias towards autocracy will break countries like Russia. I will choose to believe with you...just because it feels better.

We are, though, at a precarious moment.

Over the past century, rapid technical evolution has combined with freedom, freedom of movement, freedom of economic opportunity, and more-fair-laws-than-some to create vast growth and opportunity in the United States and much of the world.

The opportunity still feels large. The chance for creativity and revolutionary technology still shines.

Realistically, though, the risk is large, too.

It is possible that technology has become less of an an enabler and more of a restrainer.

First, technology is big now and expensive. A single paper in a top medical scientific journal can easily cost $1 million--for one *paper* among hundreds published that month. The typical startup requires far more funding than in the halcyon days of 1995. The go-go-automobile era of the early 1900's saw upwards of two-thousand startup automobile companies. We do not see that fecundity in 2022.

Second, technology can severely limit a people's access to "truth" if a government chooses. They don't call it the the Great Firewall of China for nothing.

Third, communication technology has surprisingly created organic firewalls that separate people of one mind from others. Without any conscious effort, we are consciously blocking creativity and the social flexibility a diverse, free society needs.

We do not face an easy path. Humans seem drawn to autocracy like a moth to a flame.

Will this generation of humanity flame up like the rising Phoenix?

Or will it fall to the ground like Icarus, betrayed by a foolish faith in wings made of wax?

Let’s try for the upside.

Be well