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Today is the day for somewhat less technical more philosophical article on how the USA did become a country where a breakthrough is an ordinary extraordinary event. I will look at the country as more like a philosophical idea and I chose deliberately to mention no historical figure, as a hero can be anyone, and subjectively I find it more objective to view history as a flow that creates the opportunities that are filled by one person or another.
In memory we have strong references to the personalities and less focus on the societies - I wish here to present a slightly different perspective.
Also I choose to select positive subjects only as it is a postal card for the anniversary of the USA.
Hence yes, it will be a highly subjective and contradictory selection of random facts that I find important.
C'est la vie.
Asteroid
The life was peaceful and stressful, Tyrannosauruses (T. rexes) could be found chilling under the sun, till one day a guest from the space heavily affected their way of lives and gave space to the most dangerous predators with both eyes looking forward and very functional hands.
Beringia
It's just fascinating how an estimated population of 1280 individuals could survive for 117000 years from 930000 to 817000 years ago.
Thank you for having survived!
Then around 20000 ago some 500 individuals made it to Alaska. Why? Who knows, maybe the grass was greener there. That's the power of small steps.
European Exploration
Since 1492 Europeans started coming to the America and till now people come and go, somehow the first colonies reiterated the known pattern - being squeezed between the Appalachian mountains and the Atlantic ocean formed an identity, it started to feel like home.
The Cumberland Gap
Once it started to be too crowded some of the settlers decided to move further west, to see whether the grass was greener on the other side of the mountain ridge. That was the major preparation event for the rapid transformation of the society.
American Independence 1776
From zero to hero in a matter of 30 years : once the USA was established the timeline to become a continental power was remarkably swift - the Louisiana purchase in 1803 sealed the transformation.
To my opinion this is the exact time when the core feature of American society had been formed - capacity to scale innovation.
Canals and railways
The single answer why the New York City is rich today is Erie Canal.
The question was how to organize the large territory and to make it efficient for doing business, roughly how to scale the success of the first colonies.
The railways: Chicago to San Francisco, New Orleans to Los Angeles, St. Paul (Minneapolis) to Seattle - that was the answer.
Once Upon a Time in the West - when you have a railway station you can go anywhere.
Another way to travel from East to West was through the Panama Canal. That was how the country became a good place for doing business.
Industry
Once you have an infrastructure you may scale fast : telegraph, telephone, steel, oil, electricity, cars, aviation.
There Will Be Blood - mentality shift in the society, new moral order, from community to individualism, from religion to capitalism. And the cost.
The Great Depression
Once you know how to scale success eventually you may end up scaling failure. Great it happened then, so it has less chances to happen again.
The Manhattan Project
This is the hardest part to write. It's a story of another country that had casual visits of foreigners, went to isolation, ended isolation, launched a study if they should evolve their institutions to match the ones on the West, decided to change their way of living, became strong and successful. Shogun - The Pacific - The Manhattan Project.
Success is not the only dimension, and not the main one.
Appolo 13
This is one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.
So far the Moon Landing achievement is unmatched.
To my opinion, the Appolo 13 is unmatched in a different dimension - successful failure, the most focused effort in a limited time.
Houston, we’ve had a problem.
How to put the square peg into the round hole?
The mission itself became a redefinition of success.
Silicon Valley
Research -> startup -> industry.
Universities + talents + capital + risk tolerant culture + density + good weather + freedom = fast scale of innovation.
The equation is simple, the variables are known.
The Silicon Valley turned the internet into a product and placed it in people's pockets.
AI
We are here now.
The founders of the AI-startups are sitting around the same table as the country leaders.
The water is needed by the servers and by the people.
The innovation cycle is short.
There will be a disruption, every innovation brings disruption.
The cognitive load in 2026 is hard, you need to be ready for everything, and the world is changing fast.
The ongoing breakthrough might be the most impressive in the human history.
It won’t be smooth, and it will raise both everyday and philosophical questions.
For example : what is the meaning of life?
...
This article has no new thoughts, and the general structure is somewhat inspired by 2001 : A Space Odyssey.
It serves as an appetizer that invites to unfold different layers of context and to see why the scale of innovation is a core American feature.
Happy 250th anniversary, land of the free, home of the brave.
To finalize this article I will refer to the citation from Monty Python's The Meaning of Life
Try and be nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book every now and then, get some walking in, and try and live together in peace and harmony with people of all creeds and nations.
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