Hi Everyone,
Tomorrow will be 20 years since the 9/11 attacks – the event that changed the course of history. As an American, I was profoundly shocked, saddened, and angry. Terrorism was something that happened around the world but not in the USA. We embarked on a military campaign unparalleled in modern history. World War 2 only lasted 6 years. We’ve just left Afghanistan and while we could all agree it was a messy and tragic ending, with 16 brave soldiers giving their lives a couple of week ago to save countless Americans and refugees, speaking for myself, I am glad this war is over.
We have plenty of challenges here at home that need to be addressed. It’s my hope that our country can come together, heal the divisions and tone down the hateful rhetoric between the various political factions. The republicans and the democrats are not football teams that we root for. The Founding Fathers intended the political parties to be a source of ideas and inspiration in the grand experiment of democracy, not warring factions that should conquer one another. Right after 9/11 the country was unified and focused; I miss that a lot. I wonder if we’ve gotten so used to war that our culture has become numb to consequences of sustained conflict.
We are entering a new age of technology, similar in scale or potentially larger than the industrial revolution. Last night I read a paper by the National Institutes of Technology (NIST), that makes the case that they may have discovered a new fundamental force of nature. Currently there are four fundamental forces: Gravity, Electromagnetics, the weak force, and the strong force … why would a 5th force be a big deal you ask? Because many of the blockers in the next generation of computing and especially quantum computing could be solved with this new understanding of the universe. Quantum computing will solve many of the most complex problems that we can conceive, imagine that Cancer is cured, Climate Change is reversed, and Colonizing planets nearby is an everyday reality, after NIST’s announcement we are one large step forward towards achieving those goals. This discovery, not coincidentally, was also 20 years in the making.
I propose that as we solemnly remember 9/11 tomorrow, we also remember that we are all Americans, we have an obligation to our founders and the next generation to build a better future, not based in war or the strength of our military but in the unbounded leadership and innovation that has been the hallmark of the American way.
Let’s go be great!
Brad