I was recently engaged in a discussion with two colleagues focused around the question “what’s wrong?”  This question was, given our current socio-political situation, aimed at the US and was inspired by continually slumping property value, an unstable investment landscape, a sense of lost or waning global superiority in the technological arena, and a committee of elected “leadership” who seem unable or unwilling to compromise and achieve solutions.  While the core problem seems to stem from corruption and a broken economic strategy, upon further consideration the motivations for these symptoms all point fundamentally back to the people, not necessarily the system.  It would be naïve for me to claim knowledge about our nation’s core issues, but as a scientist I do feel qualified to speculate as to the cause of our impending loss of technological prowess and how it might apply to the other symptoms.

We were the first, stable, modern government to invest heavily into science & engineering.  Our leadership made it a priority, creating jobs and well-funded programs, and welcomed the best and brightest from around the world to join our efforts toward technological leadership in the WWII era.  This national priority has sustained itself to today, but the glory associated with being a member of the technological community, our race to the moon for example, has been left by the wayside.  There are two sides to this problem, if we indeed decide to classify it as such: (1) America’s scientific establishment has been running out of momentum since the Cold War and (2) other countries have noticed the success of our investments and have worked very hard to catch up.  While it may seem that we simply have an ineffective economic system to sustain our future, this assertion itself helps to point out a more fundamental concern – are we, as citizens of a democratic republic, too dependent and too expectant of our elected leadership and government?  In today’s modern and connected world, the average person has been endowed with an increasingly large amount of power.  Not stand alone power, mind you, but it remains that the responsibility that comes from being a well-connected group of individuals must be felt by each member.

If one person decides they wish to purchase their dream home, even though they cannot afford it yet, this has virtually no impact on the system of housing value or credit/debt stability.  If they default, they’re out of luck, but few else notice.  As soon as our naturally competitive spirit shows itself in mass however, causing a large part of home-buyers to get in over their heads with debt that has been made available by similarly minded but otherwise positioned bankers, the systemic stability comes into doubt.  If one raving lunatic mounts their soapbox to demand things of the government, no one in D.C. will pay attention.  As soon as this person posts to YouTube, or gets on the news, and starts generating even the smallest resonance with others, politicians go on edge so as not to offend or disrupt this disproportionately loud demographic.  The average American, by virtue of our numbers and access to the world, is under-educated, over-empowered, and excessively pandered to by its leadership.

As the same colleague who started this discussion always says: never complain unless you intend to suggest solutions!  Therefore, what can be done?  The full answer is undoubtedly multifaceted, but my simple answer is infrastructure and education.  We, as an international community, need to find a way to better organize and filter media, both social and traditional.  While this can lead pretty quickly to some sort of totalitarian control mechanism, I’d like to think that it will simply be an evolutionary result of information technologies.  This ties into education next because it will become increasingly important to educate ourselves and future generations these best practices with regard to managing the power of connectivity.  Those who learn to manipulate this flattening world most effectively will, after all, certainly control the remainder of the 21st century.