Chicago Boyz Archive

Columbus Day and Some Thoughts on America 3.0

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1519 --- by Sebastiano del Piombo --- Image by © Bettmann/CORBIS
1519 — by Sebastiano del Piombo — Image by © Bettmann/CORBIS

The current orthodoxy on Columbus is that he, and his impact, were unmitigated evil. This is, to say the least, an over-correction from earlier mythologizing.

Columbus certainly treated the people of Hispaniola who fell under his authority abusivley and cruelly. In that regard, he was typical of his day and age.

What was atypical about Columbus was his ingenious insight about the Atlantic wind patterns, and his superhuman drive to cross the Ocean Sea and arrive, as he incorrectly believed, in the Far East. It is of course false that people in his day did not know that the planet was spherical. Columbus did not have to prove that. Columbus was mistaken about the size of the sphere, and he imagined China to be a lot close than it was.

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History Friday: Joseph Conrad and the Impact of European Culture and Technology

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young conrad

I have in recent years been reading the work of Joseph Conrad. I spent many years believing the best writers in English were George Orwell, Evelyn Waugh, with Leo Tolstoy in translation as a titan and peer. Then all of a sudden, in the last five or years I discovered that Ernest Hemingway is a near peer, and that V.S. Naipaul is every bit the equal of these great ones. And through Naipaul, I met Conrad, who also merits admission to this august company.

Naipaul and Conrad both have as a main theme the encounter, the clash, between European civilization and the peoples and ways of Asia and Africa. Conrad depicts the European imperial and commercial expansion near its peak, and while it is still confident and expanding. Naipaul depicts the world after the European domination has receded, like an outgoing tsunami, which has left a transformed landscape behind.

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C. Steven Tucker on “Against the Current” with Dan Proft

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Steve Tucker

My friend Steve Tucker may be the foremost expert on the Obamacare legislation. He was interviewed on Dan Proft‘s video show Upstream Ideas.

Steve has an infuriating tale about being targeted by the IRS because of his public criticism of the Obama administration. The blatant abuse of government power by this administration is an outrage and a disgrace. The migration of the “Chicago Way” to Washington DC is a story which is suppressed, and the victims are ridiculed and dismissed by the mainstream media, if they are mentioned at all.

One of the best things I ever did was go to some early Chicago Tea Party events. I met many wonderful, patriotic people. Steve Tucker is one of the best.

John Hornick on 3D Printing, and some related comments about America 3.0

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John-Hornick

[Note: I am not personally or professionally acquainted with Mr. Hornick. He is in no way associated with any opinions I may have, or proposals I have made. He is not affiliated in any way with the America 3.0 Institute.]

We wrote America 3.0 in 2012, mostly, and it was published in 2013. In the book we present a picture of America in 2040. We predict the demise of the industrial-era political and economic order, which is visibly failing today, and the rise of a new set of institutional arrangements for the country. A big part of this change is the development of several important new technologies which will undermine the existing order, and democratize the economy in radical ways.

We focused on 3D printing, driverless cars, cheap desalination and personalized health care and medication. We were not trying to write a comprehensive book about future technology. Rather, our goal was to indicate the scale of the changes in technology which were coming, and the disruptive impact they would have. If we were to write it now, we would have said more about robotics, drones, and blockchains, for example. Nonetheless, the general trend of things is as we predicted. And as we suspected, things are moving much faster, and the world will be even more different by 2040 than we rather conservatively predicted.

I recently ran across some outstanding videos by John Hornick, an intellectual property attorney at the Finnegan firm in DC. His Twitter is here. Mr. Hornick is an expert on the law and the technology of 3D printing. I have spent a few hours immersed in his videos.

Mr. Hornick has a video, entitled “3D Printing State of the Art: Industrial” from May of 2015 which gets into detail about the current state of the art in 3D printing. It is a good primer if you are interested in the field. His deep knowledge as well as his enthusiasm make for a compelling presentation of a highly technical subject.

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Mike Lotus on Against the Current with Dan Proft

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Proft III

Dan Proft, shown above, Chicago’s best conservative talk radio host recently interviewed me for his video podcast series, Against the Current, which is part of a larger initiative called Upstream Ideas. I listened to Dan’s earlier conversations with Vicente Serrano, and John Kass, both of which were good.

I enjoyed the conversation with Dan, which focused on the book I co-authored, America 3.0: Rebooting American Prosperity in the 21st Century —-Why America ’s Greatest Days Are Yet to Come. We touched on the larger theme of Conservative pessimism, and the need to have a future vision to inspire us and to be working toward. We also teased out the fact that a better future is not in any way inevitable, but it is achievable only if the people who want it make it happen. Our Progressive fellow citizens never forget this. We shouldn’t either.

Dan at one point jokingly said, I paraphrase: Can’t you just leave the Conservatives alone, and let them enjoy their hopelessness in peace?

Nope!

We will all have a lot we need to do in the years ahead. Great days for America are coming, whatever the intervening trials. So, be happy.

It is always a pleasure to speak to Dan Proft, and I hope you will listen and find the conversation interesting as well.