The world has been changed many times over by the brilliance of Steve Jobs. I could not begin in these short moments after his death to estimate his impact on me and mine. But a few thoughts deserve jotting down. I first encountered Jobs in the pages of Fortune magazine, in 1982, wherein I first [...]
Technology
If you think the Internet revolution encompasses only areas like business, advertising, publishing and entertainment, you are sorely mistaken. In less than a decade, starting from nearly nothing, left-wing powerhouse MoveOn.org created a force that can put a million volunteers on the ground, can raise $30 million in small donor contributions every cycle (several times [...]
Technological change is accelerating at an accelerating rate. It’s hard for even the greatest technologists to keep up, much less analyze the societal implications of their work. So where are we headed? Here are four of the trends you most need to watch. » Adult stem cells: While all media and political attention seems focused [...]
How many problems does it take for “one of the most sophisticated systems ever produced by man” to become just another white elephant? A lot of people have been asking that about the Space Shuttle lately. But the Space Shuttle’s downward spiral started long, long ago. In fact, it started in the Nixon Administration. In [...]
Last week — March 23 — marked the twenty-first anniversary of the announcement of Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) to defend America from a missile attack. For everyone who sees missile defense as a moral and strategic imperative, it’s been a happy anniversary indeed. The reason? Thanks to President Bush, this is the year [...]
Some folks, it seems, just never learn. Especially doom-and-gloomers. In 1980, the late economist Julian Simon made a bet with Paul Ehrlich, author of the best-selling 1968 book, The Population Bomb. The bet concerned commodity prices and was intended to illustrate a point. Simon wagered prices would fall; Ehrlich said they would rise. Both men agreed that higher [...]
Historians sometimes ask themselves questions like “How must Queen Isabella have felt when she finally gave permission for Columbus to sail to the New World?” Maybe someday they will ask the same of George W. Bush. Bush’s vision, announced this Wednesday to an overflow crowd at NASA headquarters, is a vow to expand “human presence [...]
When Orville and Wilbur Wright launched their Flyer into the history books, one hundred years ago this day, they could not possibly have imagined the consequences of their act. And neither could anyone else. Man had dreamed of flight probably since the Garden; but as late as 1895 Lord Kelvin, President of the Royal Society, joined in [...]
Not long before September 11, the bipartisan Hart-Rudman Commission concluded its three year study of America’s security needs over the next quarter century. Chartered by former President Clinton and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, the commission reached some truly alarming conclusions. Some, like the threat of nuclear terrorism, are on everyone’s minds today. But others [...]
“We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union. . . provide for the common defense. . . and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.” – Preamble to the United States Constitution “Q: [...]
There is very little our government does which actually falls within those powers granted by the Constitution, but among those things which do is national defense. And as one might expect in the looking-glass world of Washington, national defense, for all the billions spent on it, is one of the powers Washington exercises least. Nowhere [...]
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