Some Perspective on American High-tech Exceptionalism

I love my country.  It is my home and where I have spent almost all of my life.  I love the incredibly diverse landscape, I love the people (or at least most of them . . .), I love the culture, I love the energy and the friendliness that generally prevails across our land.  

But I don’t love my country because it is better than other countries.  I don’t subscribe to that notion.  America, like every other nation on earth, has its beauty, its wonder and its admirable traits.  But also like every other nation, it has some very unfortunate habits and faults.

Our over-the-top patriotism and boastful claim to a unique ‘exceptionalism’ is one of these.  In the disastrous age of Trump, this unchecked boosterism has attained epic heights and any criticism or more nuanced appraisal of our history and our accomplishments is seen as anti-American, ‘woke’ and treasonous.

At the risk of being similarly branded, I want to take a more nuanced look at our domination of the age of computer and information technology.  There is no doubt that US companies dominate the high-tech world.  But is this domination purely American?  And is it tied to our uniquely exceptional country and its uniquely exceptional people?

There was this little thing called World War II that occurred just before the middle of the twentieth century.  And guess what?  The USA was the only industrial nation that came out of the war without catastrophic damage. In fact, having expanded dramatically as the ‘arsenal of democracy’, it was actually stronger than when the war started.

The invention and rapid development of the transistor and silicon technology launched the computer age.  It is no surprise that a country that had emerged stronger from both world wars would be in a position to make these innovations.  The creation of technology hubs in Massachusetts and California benefited from the readily available investment capital of the wealthiest nation in the world and research from the best endowed universities.

There is a ‘network effect’ when something achieves a certain level of achievement and begins to attract similar things.  History is replete with examples – Athens during the Golden Age of Greece, Florence  during the Renaissance, Manchester and Liverpool during the early industrial revolution, and Germany’s universities during the rise of scientific discovery there in the late 1800’s.  The rise of Silicon Valley, Route 128 in Boston and other tech hubs was the natural outcome of a confluence of factors that created this network effect.

As the computer hardware revolution spawned the software and information age, which required less capital expense and investment, the key innovations became a bit more international.  Software languages were invented by engineers from many different countries – Peter Naur (Danish) and Niklaus Wirth (Swiss) invented many of the early languages (ALGOL, PL360, Pascal, Modula) that paved the way beyond the limitations of FORTRAN and COBOL.  Other international players introduced concepts of object-oriented programming.

Soon thereafter, computer software and network hardware enabled the invention of the Internet. The underlying networking protocols (TCP/IP) were developed at DARPA, a US defense department organization, by Americans Bob Kahn and Vinton Cerf.  But the higher-level protocols and concepts that enabled the World Wide Web (HTTP and the browser) were created by British engineer Tim Berners-Lee at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research.  

The years following the advent of the Internet saw furious advances in software and networking.  Many different languages were invented.  European software developers contributed heavily to these advances.  C++, Python and PHP were all invented by Europeans, and Java by a Canadian.  The most prevalent operating system in the world, Linux, was invented by a Finnish computer scientist, Linus Torvalds.

As we hurtle into the AI era (perhaps our last era?), it is interesting to note that many of the key breakthrough concepts and techniques that created the world of neural networks, chatbots, and LLMs were developed at the University of Toronto by a group of computer scientists including Geoffrey Hinton, Yann LeCun,  Alex Krizhevsky and Ilya Sutskever.  Hinton formed a company, DNNResearch, in Toronto, which was acquired by Google to supercharge its AI subsidiary, Google Brain.

Intelligence and creativity are human attributes that defy national boundaries.  Even entrepreneurship is a universal and somewhat primal urge.  But investment capital, networking opportunities, talent pools and other seductive aspects of technology hubs have a strong magnetic pull and attract would-be innovators from across the world.

Yes, America is the envy of the world for its prowess in technology.  But how it got there and how it sustains that prestige is not a simple question of American exceptionalism.  It is a combination of timing, available investment capital, the network effect and momentum. America is a wonderful place, but the wide world is just as wonderful and as the saying goes, we stand on the shoulders of those creative and energetic men and women from across the world who propel us forward.

Fate, Destiny, Providence and God’s Plan

In my continuing quest to understand the nature and conflicts of metaphysics and religion, I am intrigued by the question of what we mean when we toss around the terms fate and destiny, and what religious people mean when they speak of providence and of God’s plan.

Both fate and destiny describe some form of predetermined future.  However, dictionaries say that fate implies a blind, unchangeable outcome driven by outside forces (fate comes from the Latin Fatum, which means ‘that which has been spoken’), while destiny suggests a purposeful goal shaped at least in part by personal choices and efforts.

In Greek mythology, the ‘fates’ were three sister goddesses who ‘personify the inescapable destiny and lifespan of every mortal and God’. Clotho, the Spinner, spun the thread of life at birth; Lachesis, the measurer, measured the length of the thread, deciding how long that person lives; and Atropos, the inevitable, cut the thread with her shears, marking the exact moment of death.

We speak of accepting one’s fate, and the term fatalistic implies a passive acceptance of what is often a difficult outcome.  People from every era and every culture have bemoaned the often cruel and arbitrary nature of fate.

Fate implies a lack of free will.  If your fate is predetermined, then in theory what you do cannot affect or change it.  Yet even people that accepted the concept of fate continued to act as if they had free will, probably because it is against human nature to cease acting on one’s behalf.  Perhaps they were willing to accept the somewhat dispiriting notion that everything we do is predictable in advance and simply hope for the best.

In the midst of the enlightenment, when the laws of physics and mathematics were being discovered, it was tempting to imagine that the universe was completely deterministic and that everything could in theory be predicted.  This seemed to lend some credibility to the concepts of fate or destiny.  But as science progressed into the twentieth century, the role that chance, noise, probability and randomness/stochasticity play completely changed our perspective and introduced a new level of uncertainty in both the physical and the human world.   

The concept of a predetermined outcome, or fate, is no longer embraced by most rational people unless they believe in a religious version, which is known as providence or more simply, God’s plan.

The monotheistic religions appear to have a spectrum of beliefs about the nature of free will and predetermination.  Many religions believe in predestination, which is similar to fate in that it posits that the entire path of our lives is known by God.  The issue of free will is debated endlessly, and different groups at different times have come up with ways to reconcile predestination and free will.  But contradictions and logical absurdities abound in these attempts to fit ancient concepts of fate and providence into a world where science, logic and reason predominate.

Some theorize that God is outside of time and history and is able to know and observe everything about our lives without denying us free will.  But many of the same people speak of God’s plan as if one’s life has been planned or is at least in the process of being planned as one lives.  How this can coexist with free will is never completely explained.

Most religious people believe that God intercedes in our lives in enacting his plan, but the question of how a merciful and loving God that is acting on our behalf allows horrible things to happen is only vaguely addressed.  The typical answer is that evil occurs because God is not a puppet master and that he allows us free will and that humankind’s sin causes bad things to happen. 

But this is a woefully inadequate and illogical answer.  If God can and does intercede yet allows evil to occur then that begs the question on what basis God intercedes?  Why cure one cancer and not another?  Why save one life in a plane crash and not the rest? The usual response is that God’s ways are mysterious, a profoundly unsatisfying explanation.

Whether fate or providence, the idea of a predetermined path of life is both pain and solace to many.  If one’s life is burdensome and full of failure, then the idea of fate may bring some measure of comfort, as one can rationalize the misfortune as inevitable and avoid responsibility. Similarly, if a great tragedy occurs, some may find relief in believing that God’s plan will bring some good out of it eventually. 

Accepting the fact that events in our lives or in the world may be purely random is difficult and distressing.  But what remains is indeed true free will.  How we react to events can have impact on our own lives and the lives of others.  We do have agency, however feeble it may seem, and we must do what we can to have positive effect.  It is the most needed characteristic of humanity.

Confidence

Confidence is a trait that is highly regarded.  Merriam Webster defines it as follows: a feeling or consciousness of one's powers or of reliance on one's circumstances.  We are told that confidence is essential to success in life, indeed even to happiness.  A lack of confidence is seen as a failing, a weakness, and likely to lead to misfortune or at best, mediocrity.

But as I regard my own life, I am struck by how variable and ephemeral confidence is.  It comes and goes with surprising fickleness.  One can be supremely confident in the moment, imbued with almost limitless trust in oneself, then find soon thereafter that confidence has fled, leaving one hesitant and uncertain about a course of action.

I have experienced this in many aspects of my life, but perhaps most acutely in sports.  In my soccer career I was fortunate to have a good level of success, both in high school and college.  There were games where I felt like a superman, where almost every touch I made on the ball was clever and skillful, and goals came with surprising ease.  But a week later I could seem hapless, unable to generate much creativity or presence on the pitch.

What was clear was that confidence bred more confidence in a delightful acceleration, and that the loss of confidence became a downward spiral with similar dynamics.  It was easy to ride the upward march of confidence and quite difficult to stem its fall.

There were similar alternating flights of confidence and insecurity in my professional life. Sometimes I felt like a master of the universe, completely in control of a situation, meeting, project or task.  Other times I faced a crisis of confidence, feeling inadequate or enervated. 

Confidence can be cultivated and nurtured through effort – by practice, acquisition of skills, and other methods of creating a basis for it.  If we are industrious and work in good faith to increase our competencies, then a deserved increase in confidence will likely occur.  Confidence does not appear out of nowhere and a small measure of pride in having built it is not entirely unmerited, but we should be acutely aware that confidence also requires some measure of good fortune, opportunity or well-suited circumstances. 

Sometimes a loss of confidence is clearly a consequence of events outside of our control.  And similarly, a lucky confluence of good fortune may make our self-confidence soar and produce that euphoric sense that we are invincible.

There is a line in Shakespeare's play Julius Caesar that I find helpful in understanding the impact that some what random, external events can have on our confidence:  

There is a tide in the affairs of men
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.

It is a mark of immature vanity to believe that all of our confidence and accomplishments have been self-created and that we deserve sole credit.  We should all indulge in a bit of imposter syndrome now and then to keep our egos in check.  And we should always remind ourselves as we gaze upon those whose confidence has departed and whose fortunes have plummeted that ‘there but for the grace of God/fate go I’.

The Age of Multi-Impotency

When I was young, the cold war was underway and the threat of nuclear war hung over our heads like the sword of Damocles.  In elementary school at a naval base in Hawaii, we practiced walking to bomb shelters during the Cuban Missile Crisis and performing the absurdly useless ‘duck and cover’ maneuver.  At the time, I don’t recall being frightened or overly concerned.  I was a child.

As I got older, in the late 60’s and 70’s, the thought of nuclear war became less abstract to me and I began to seriously ponder the consequences and the probability of it occurring.  The potential consequences were, of course, catastrophic beyond comprehension.  

But as frightening as a nuclear holocaust seemed, the actual likelihood seemed very low (only later to discover that we came scarily close several times!).  And of course there was little or nothing I could do about it.  I felt impotent, but it didn’t really bother me that much.

What a difference a few decades make!  The world today offers up multiple nuclear holocaust types of scenarios, each with its own unique feeling of impotence.  There is global warming, artificial intelligence, growing authoritarianism and unilateralism, the new ultra-plutocracy, the loss of biodiversity, the proliferation of plastic pollution, and worst of all, the MAGA cult and its megalomaniacal leaders.

And while the probability of nuclear holocaust was perceived as rather low during the cold war, the twenty first century plagues are already inflicting massive damage on our world and clearly accelerating the march toward cataclysmic events.  

To feel impotent to impact an unlikely, though chilling, single scenario like nuclear war is one thing.  To regard so many encroaching perils and feel impotent to have any real impact on any one of them is almost insupportable.  The age of multi-impotency is upon us, and humanity hangs in the balance.

Missing the Point on Morality

A large motivational force behind the MAGA movement is the hysteria over the decline of so-called Christian values and morality.  Well intentioned people see the changes in sexual mores, the ubiquity of Internet pornography, the increase in single parent and non-traditional families, the acceptance of homosexuality and gay marriage, abortions and drug use as signs of a catastrophic decay of societal morality.

They attribute this ‘decay’ to the decline in Christian affiliation and church attendance, and more generally, to left wing or liberal ideologies.  The historical association of communism with atheism is conflated with any left-leaning political inclination.  The fact that many mainline Christian denominations have embraced more liberal policies in the past is dismissed as corruption or naïveté.

The so-called ills that frighten the MAGA cult are complex societal or personal topics.  Sexuality, and all of its associated issues (sexual preference, pre-marital sex, abortion, pornography) have challenged societies for millennia.  There is no single set of moral codes that can resolve them.  

And if we are honest with ourselves, then we must confess that these primarily affect the individual, whether for good or for bad, and it is therefore up to each individual to decide what path to take as long as it does not directly harm others.

There are indeed moral failings in our society, but they have nothing to do with sexuality or substance addiction.  

It is a moral failing that we have so much wealth in our society yet there is no universal medical coverage.  

It is a moral failing that much of the world still languishes in desperate poverty and falls prey to famine and disease when other parts of the world have an embarrassment of riches.  

It is a moral failing that we spend so much of our resources on weapons.  

It is a moral failing that we continue to pollute the air and water, accelerate global warming with no effort to reduce it, and produce ever more plastic and other long-term contaminants.

It is a moral failing that we are more interested in throttling or preventing the immigration of desperate world citizens than in helping to solve the problems that cause this migration.

The fact that Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism and Hinduism have much more to say about these moral failings than the ones the MAGA world decries is apparently lost on these hyper religious doomsayers.  If there is to be a true ‘turning point’, then it would be the loving unification of the religious faithful with their humanist brethren to address the real moral failings and work toward a more moral world together.

Lindsey Graham – The Poster Child of Unprincipled Politics

The dead will have their eulogies.  People will search for the good in them and pretend it was their essence. But let’s not kid ourselves.  Lindsey Graham was an unprincipled political animal, only in it for himself.  The list of Trump sycophants who jettisoned all scruples to feast at the MAGA trough is long, but Graham rightfully holds an exalted status in this list of self-serving opportunists.  

Graham’s flip-flopping on Trump and the MAGA world was not an outlier in his career.  He completely changed his position on multiple issues – gun control, abortion, immigration, climate change, election denial, etc.  Early on, he famously promised to serve no more than 12 years as an elected official, then died in his 31st year.  After using tortured logic to rationalize the refusal of a republican led congress to accept Merrick Garland’s nomination to the Supreme Court in 2016, he chaired the Judiciary Committee that cynically turned that logic on its head to drive through the confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett.  

In foreign affairs, Graham was a saber rattler and chest beater extraordinaire, a cheerleader for every huge foreign intervention mistake that the USA has made in the last 30 years.  His jingoism was particularly focused on the Middle East and his unequivocal support of every Israeli military operation and oppression of Palestinians is part of why we have Netanyahu and his Nazi-like settler movement in charge of Israel today.

Yes, Graham would occasionally cross the aisle to work with Democrats.  And from time to time he did demonstrate a bit of true conviction.  But if we are to learn from the mistakes of the Trump era, then we must recognize that the crass opportunism that has kept Trump in power must be exposed and denounced in no uncertain terms.  Lindsey Graham, along with JD Vance and Marco Rubio, is a perfect example.  Whether he was a purely cynical operator, or somehow drank some of the MAGA kool aid and fell under Trump’s spell, his mercurial turnabout is a cautionary tale about how the lust for power can take away all conscience and integrity.

Meta Pervert Glasses – The Technology That Only A Creep Can Love

Mark Zuckerberg is a toxic, tough guy wannabe who clearly nurses deep neuroses from childhood.  So it is no surprise that his company Meta has launched the most invasive, cringy technology that one can imagine – eyeglasses that allow people to spy on and video everyone around them.  If there is a better example of technology run amok I cannot imagine it.

Facebook, later Meta, became a juggernaut by fouling the waters of social media and amplifying the insecurities of vulnerable tweens and adolescents with their addictive algorithms.  After a pathetic, failed fever dream of creating the metaverse, Zuckerberg pivoted to the final frontier of privacy - glasses that assault both the users and every unwitting person they encounter with unneeded and despised technology.

We have smart phones and watches and oura rings.  We have ipads and air pods and headphones, and a few of us still use computers.  How much of our bodies and our lives can we smother in technology before we have finally had enough?

Zuckerberg’s pervert glasses seem to be hitting a brick wall lately.  People talk about being ridiculed and shamed for wearing them.  There are huge privacy issues when people have the means to record voice and video without consent of people around them.  Who could have possibly thought this was a good idea?  Zuckerberg, of course.  

If there is any justice in this universe, then meta glasses will die a quick death and be a huge failure for Meta and its broligarchic founder, Zuckerberg.  If not, then they will be one more nail in the coffin of humanity’s chance to lead a life unfettered by constant technological irritations.