When New Years come, they seem to come suddenly. New Year comes always as a surprise, with nary a warning; then raising its head, forcing itself upon our minds a day after Christmas, it sings the dirge. Death as yet undefeated. The winter kills a tender reed. We reflect upon it for less than a week, and recognize if briefly, New Year upon New Years’ nearly imperceptible creeping of Time: Time the thief, Time the Blighter, Time O Most Unmerciful. Then we do it again like nothing happened.
People sometimes regret their fading memories, but in fact the sum of them would probably kill an elephant. It wasn’t only sin that severed spirit from this world—not one sin or a million collected the whole world over. Remember it was on that day when the children of Adam learned of good and evil, that man and woman entered into finite time and generations began to live and die. No it was the sum total of sin and error across all time and space, which the Lord Jesus Christ took upon Himself and obliterated when He rose again. On the cross Jesus felt as if His Father God had forsaken him, and in a single moment of finite time it may very well be, because God doth not behold death (because He cannot die), nor existential Sin (because He is pure and perfect). God brought man to the portal nevertheless, even to the eye of a needle through which we may enter in with Christ, into the glorious Kingdom of Heaven.
The Godhead resides outside (as well as inside) time. Not so with us. With Him there are no solar “New Years.” All things are always New and fresh and equally Old and true, and also Wonderful. We count our years on earth because we haven’t very many. The wise make use of their time. The foolish squander it. If you ask me what life is, I will tell you that it is only time. Every New Year turning is like a bell that says your wash is almost done or the goose nearly cooked. Dust becomes dust, whether you exercise it, medicate it, intoxicate it or pretend it doesn’t exist. One might be very angry, or grateful, that God gives us so little time.
The impact upon men’s and women’s minds of thinking past time and beyond a single solar New Year is fundamental to reason and to accumulated knowledge, and indeed to civilization itself. This ability to think past finite time entails learning history among other subjects, but it critically involves learning His Story. That is because thinking past time is inherent to a reverence for and/or even the mere reference to God. There is nothing else can take His Place in our hearts or in thinking. The People of these United States have erred terribly to try and extinguish His presence from public schools and the public square. They have sinned in accepting and abetting the restrictions on freedom chiefly brought about for this purpose.
Minds without the ballast of God are easily wrecked. They fall victim to storms and madness. They substitute greedily almost every other god to fill the intellectual and the moral void. Such minds accept respective conditions of slavery, because they can never adequately measure the price or the joys of freedom: whether slavery to the will of other men and governments, or addictions to material substances, or release to the sucking hold of a psychological pit—all in order to relieve the pain of life in temporal finite time, and to escape the haunting at every New Year.
I tell you that there is another way to view things, and it puts it on the line as it must be put. Maybe the world ends at the stroke of midnight tonight, or maybe not until December 21, 2012 or any other date that you prefer. Maybe it never ends, but even scientists say that the sun will burn out someday. To tell the truth the point is that you are supposed to live in this world but with a fundamental reference outside of it. That’s what it means to live in but not of the world. Do your best—sure, but also live outside of finite time the way our Lord instructed. That’s a big part of what it means to have that mind in us which was also in Christ Jesus (ex: I Corinthians 2:16). If you do this then you are and will be a potent force for good in the world. If you don’t then you are like the chaff or worse like chattel, particularly in this day and age of decay and omnipotent secular federal government. Oh yeah, the physical realm is still a dust to dust proposition but with a difference. You can leave your signature, you can make your mark; right wrongs and injustices, give evil a hard time; win one for the Gipper, and glorify God—this New Year, and the next, and the next after Next.
Sunday, December 26, 2010
Monday, December 20, 2010
Merry Christmas to All! (Issue #481)
I watched a classic film at the Beltonian Theater (www.BeltonianTheater.com) last week. I’m also looking forward to seeing others before Christmas and again before New Years while holidays last. The thing that struck me this time about “It’s a Wonderful Life” (1946) was that while it was over sixty years old, it was as marvelous as ever today on the big “silver screen.” Literally generations have watched this story depicted on film and enjoyed it the same as me.
Christmas is similar, in that, generations over the course of many centuries have heard and read and seen reenacted the Story about a special babe, born to a virgin on one holy night. Travelers reported seeing him lying in a manger wrapped in swaddling clothes. The birth is as joyful an event to contemplate now as it was then, and as marvelous to hear that Story again as it was on the first day it was told.
There was a married couple named Joseph and Mary who loved each other, and they travelled across country to a little town called Bethlehem. The young bride was very pregnant and so the trip was hard, but they had to go there in order to pay their taxes, because those were the instructions from the Roman government. The weather was cool—cold when the sun went down. They arrived in town when it was evening and there was no lodging left, nothing at the inn where Joseph had expected to find room. But they were able to go out where the animals were kept, and there they found shelter from the cold.
In northern countries elsewhere houses are traditionally built adjoining stalls and barns, because the body heat from animals helps keep the people warm. The place where Joseph and Mary resorted to was quite a bit warmer than the outside air. The manger was normally used as a trough or box to hold hay for the animals to eat, but it made a perfect crib or bed for a baby. Mary brought the swaddling clothes, the clean warm wraps she planned to put around her newborn.
The night was clear and beautiful. A large, unusually bright star shone almost directly above their shelter. Mary delivered her baby easily, and as they had discussed they named him Jesus. Jesus was the son of Man (since his mother was Mary) and also the Son of God (his Father). Joseph was Jesus’ step-father therefore, because Mary had been impregnated by the Holy Spirit and angels had explained this both to Mary and Joseph before their wedding. Indeed, outside the place where Jesus was born shepherds would report that angels and a “multitude of the heavenly host” were attending and happily announced this great and historic Event to them (see Luke 2:8-14).
Imagine: God didn’t think Mary needed to be eighteen or to finish college first before having a child. Mary didn’t mind nor did Joseph, who was also quite a bit older than Mary. Even without the extramarital pregnancy, Mary’s relationship with Joseph would appear scandalous today. God didn’t ask them (or us), however, for permission or about the wisdom of His plan. He informed them and they accepted it, because in those days they knew some things better than us. To use a Biblical metaphor, like the clay which ought not to question what reason is in the Potter’s hand. Subordination was clearly understood as between the Creator and all He creates.
Miracle attends the birth of every human child. The birth of Jesus was singularly spectacular, however, because he was the coincidence of Man and God on earth. Jesus beheld a perfect, all-powerful eye upon the world wherever he went. His existence and being as such, gave proof of so much, namely the proof of God’s plan and of Life beyond the veil of matter. Jesus Christ was and is the living proof of Purpose and Power, that Love is stronger than hate and Life the ultimate conqueror over death.
Without that first glorious Christmas morning when Jesus drew his breath and smiled his first smile, and looked up at Mary with an immense joy and love radiating back at him from a mother’s heart—nothing, absolutely nothing else would be the same. “It’s a Wonderful Life” would not play at a movie or dinner theater. The story would be dark, incomplete, unfulfilled if written. Life itself would be accidental, love a temporal cheat. That is why Christmas is the most important Birthday in the world. Moreover, we all have an invitation to His party. A multitude of the heavenly host are still attending every year and celebrating, announcing the Good News to those who have never heard. Whenever we sing our “Silent Night” and other sacred carols, we sing our Lord’s “Happy Birthday” song. Merry Christmas to all!
Christmas is similar, in that, generations over the course of many centuries have heard and read and seen reenacted the Story about a special babe, born to a virgin on one holy night. Travelers reported seeing him lying in a manger wrapped in swaddling clothes. The birth is as joyful an event to contemplate now as it was then, and as marvelous to hear that Story again as it was on the first day it was told.
There was a married couple named Joseph and Mary who loved each other, and they travelled across country to a little town called Bethlehem. The young bride was very pregnant and so the trip was hard, but they had to go there in order to pay their taxes, because those were the instructions from the Roman government. The weather was cool—cold when the sun went down. They arrived in town when it was evening and there was no lodging left, nothing at the inn where Joseph had expected to find room. But they were able to go out where the animals were kept, and there they found shelter from the cold.
In northern countries elsewhere houses are traditionally built adjoining stalls and barns, because the body heat from animals helps keep the people warm. The place where Joseph and Mary resorted to was quite a bit warmer than the outside air. The manger was normally used as a trough or box to hold hay for the animals to eat, but it made a perfect crib or bed for a baby. Mary brought the swaddling clothes, the clean warm wraps she planned to put around her newborn.
The night was clear and beautiful. A large, unusually bright star shone almost directly above their shelter. Mary delivered her baby easily, and as they had discussed they named him Jesus. Jesus was the son of Man (since his mother was Mary) and also the Son of God (his Father). Joseph was Jesus’ step-father therefore, because Mary had been impregnated by the Holy Spirit and angels had explained this both to Mary and Joseph before their wedding. Indeed, outside the place where Jesus was born shepherds would report that angels and a “multitude of the heavenly host” were attending and happily announced this great and historic Event to them (see Luke 2:8-14).
Imagine: God didn’t think Mary needed to be eighteen or to finish college first before having a child. Mary didn’t mind nor did Joseph, who was also quite a bit older than Mary. Even without the extramarital pregnancy, Mary’s relationship with Joseph would appear scandalous today. God didn’t ask them (or us), however, for permission or about the wisdom of His plan. He informed them and they accepted it, because in those days they knew some things better than us. To use a Biblical metaphor, like the clay which ought not to question what reason is in the Potter’s hand. Subordination was clearly understood as between the Creator and all He creates.
Miracle attends the birth of every human child. The birth of Jesus was singularly spectacular, however, because he was the coincidence of Man and God on earth. Jesus beheld a perfect, all-powerful eye upon the world wherever he went. His existence and being as such, gave proof of so much, namely the proof of God’s plan and of Life beyond the veil of matter. Jesus Christ was and is the living proof of Purpose and Power, that Love is stronger than hate and Life the ultimate conqueror over death.
Without that first glorious Christmas morning when Jesus drew his breath and smiled his first smile, and looked up at Mary with an immense joy and love radiating back at him from a mother’s heart—nothing, absolutely nothing else would be the same. “It’s a Wonderful Life” would not play at a movie or dinner theater. The story would be dark, incomplete, unfulfilled if written. Life itself would be accidental, love a temporal cheat. That is why Christmas is the most important Birthday in the world. Moreover, we all have an invitation to His party. A multitude of the heavenly host are still attending every year and celebrating, announcing the Good News to those who have never heard. Whenever we sing our “Silent Night” and other sacred carols, we sing our Lord’s “Happy Birthday” song. Merry Christmas to all!
Sunday, December 12, 2010
Increasing Business Revenues Helps Fix Budget Gap, Reduce National Debt (Issue #480)
No duh—more business income translates into more in tax monies collected, and so theoretically, more with which to meet budget shortfalls and pay down our astronomical national debt. Almost exclusively, however, discussion about deficits and debt reduction inevitably centers on how best to reduce government spending or to increase taxes. Mostly liberal proponents of increasing taxes argue over what level the tax rates should be increased to and for which segments of the population. Proponents of decreased spending, debate over which federal programs should be trimmed or eliminated altogether. The choice poses a classic false dichotomy, given that a rising tide lifts all boats. Even if cutting government spending is clearly part of the answer, it isn’t exclusively all that is required or at least all that proves helpful. President Reagan knew it was possible to grow the whole pie larger, and a free market economy should never be viewed as a “zero-sum” game.
Of course today with the accumulated national debt and annual budget deficits climbing to new highs, and the nation’s economic health anemic at best, the dichotomy (false or not) becomes untenable. Increasing the tax rates and cutting federal spending programs cannot be done without considerable pain and political difficulty, not to mention without disturbing perhaps the majority of Americans who will be affected in some way. Obama’s deficit commission stated that making reductions for sustainable levels of debt and deficits would necessitate large tax increases or major spending cuts and quite probably some of each. Even if these are done, however, given those structural dislocations in the current economy, it is not very likely that the measures will do enough in time to turn this economy around to any long-term satisfaction of the American people. The fact is that both options in isolation or together merely share (and also redistribute) scarcity.
Without a doubt spending should not be profligate, and taxes should be fairly levied and impose the least burden possible. Notwithstanding, the more effective answer to reducing debt and alleviating deficits, is to grow the economy and increase business revenues. Significant and sustainable increases in the revenues of businesses, however, are unlikely using the standard approach and economic shell games of today, whether off-shoring of jobs, lay-offs of domestic labor, or selling off various assets and subsidiaries to foreign buyers. To achieve any real or sustainable increases in revenue, businesses must increase and maintain their competitive advantage in domestic and foreign markets. Moreover, a true competitive advantage is a matter of producing goods and providing services that customers want to purchase because the products and services satisfy customer needs better than the competition. If a business is not excelling at satisfying customer needs, then any other perceived “competitive advantage” equates to little more than rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic.
Under President Reagan, Michael C. Sekora directed a program called the Socrates Project within the U.S. intelligence community. Socrates enabled the United States years ago to foresee America’s present economic crisis, and it also identified the means to rebuild the country’s competitiveness and to turn things around. George Herbert Walker Bush scrapped the program for a globalized, one-world vision and supposed “New World Order.” In his scheme of things he was willing to tolerate the movement of American wages downward, willing to see well-paying and secure manufacturing jobs sent abroad to other countries. It is high time now, however, particularly since the last election that we start to complete Ronald Reagan’s economic legacy by returning America to its preeminent position in the world. The United States should pursue national strategy to this end.
The Socrates Project utilized all source intelligence and determined by examining competition worldwide that the U.S. and its organizations had begun losing competitive advantage in the marketplace after World War II as a result of switching from technology-based planning to economic-based planning as the foundation of most decision-making. Socrates also foresaw that if the U.S. continued to rely upon economic-based planning with its inherent degradation of competitive advantage, the economic health of the U.S. would eventually go into a catastrophic freefall where no amount of economic maneuvering would be able to stop it. Socrates “saw” that China via an aggressive use of technology-based planning was, in effect, rapidly building itself into the next world superpower atop the wreckage of U.S. manufacturing industries and systemic failure to apply technology strategically to marketplace coordination and real goods and services output. China was outmaneuvering the US and its organizations in the acquisition and utilization of worldwide technology purposefully, in order to decimate America's ability to generate competitive advantage long-term and to ensure a maximum competitive advantage across the full range of markets and industries well into the future.
The Socrates Project developed a highly advanced form of technology-based planning called automated innovation to restore America’s competitiveness. In automated innovation, the process for acquiring and utilizing technology for a competitive advantage, including research and development, is automated so that it can be executed with unprecedented speed, efficiency and agility. Automated innovation enables the U.S. and its major public and private organizations to consistently outmaneuver China in the exploitation of technology, in order to acquire and maintain maximum competitive advantage. Automated innovation would thereby greatly increase corporate revenues too. A Socrates Project system was deployed under Reagan and is credited with helping bring our country back economically after the devastating Carter years, when so many key industries were losing position in global competition. After the first President Bush abolished the Socrates Project, the basis of the Socrates initiative moved into the private sector where it was refined since the 1980s.
Contemporary debate in terms of how best to reduce the U.S. national debt and close federal budget deficits must include a third leg as it were, and not just the tired rhetorical tug-of-war between the need and desire to increase taxes or to cut spending. What needs to happen is that private businesses must increase their revenues in a significant and sustained way, in order to grow the economic pie and bring in more tax revenue towards retiring the debt and living within budget means. Political debate must include more than the usual suspects. Corporations and businesses have to refrain from mere economic shell games that claim profit as they hollow out their insides or lay off more American workers.
Businesses grow when the tax and trade policies are less regressive, when public-private partnerships produce the tools they need to have a real technology-based competitive edge. The U.S. Government and various State Governments should look into tech-based planning and associated tools, in order to fully address their sagging economies and mounting debt burdens. The problems we face are unique and systemic and not entirely cyclic in nature. To address the economic health of the U.S., Congress should move resolutely towards reexamination of President Reagan’s Socrates Project and the swift deployment of an upgraded and reconstituted Socrates system enabled with 21st century technology, in order to usher in automated innovation and return us to the deliberate path of sustained economic prosperity and a choice of what’s best for America.
Of course today with the accumulated national debt and annual budget deficits climbing to new highs, and the nation’s economic health anemic at best, the dichotomy (false or not) becomes untenable. Increasing the tax rates and cutting federal spending programs cannot be done without considerable pain and political difficulty, not to mention without disturbing perhaps the majority of Americans who will be affected in some way. Obama’s deficit commission stated that making reductions for sustainable levels of debt and deficits would necessitate large tax increases or major spending cuts and quite probably some of each. Even if these are done, however, given those structural dislocations in the current economy, it is not very likely that the measures will do enough in time to turn this economy around to any long-term satisfaction of the American people. The fact is that both options in isolation or together merely share (and also redistribute) scarcity.
Without a doubt spending should not be profligate, and taxes should be fairly levied and impose the least burden possible. Notwithstanding, the more effective answer to reducing debt and alleviating deficits, is to grow the economy and increase business revenues. Significant and sustainable increases in the revenues of businesses, however, are unlikely using the standard approach and economic shell games of today, whether off-shoring of jobs, lay-offs of domestic labor, or selling off various assets and subsidiaries to foreign buyers. To achieve any real or sustainable increases in revenue, businesses must increase and maintain their competitive advantage in domestic and foreign markets. Moreover, a true competitive advantage is a matter of producing goods and providing services that customers want to purchase because the products and services satisfy customer needs better than the competition. If a business is not excelling at satisfying customer needs, then any other perceived “competitive advantage” equates to little more than rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic.
Under President Reagan, Michael C. Sekora directed a program called the Socrates Project within the U.S. intelligence community. Socrates enabled the United States years ago to foresee America’s present economic crisis, and it also identified the means to rebuild the country’s competitiveness and to turn things around. George Herbert Walker Bush scrapped the program for a globalized, one-world vision and supposed “New World Order.” In his scheme of things he was willing to tolerate the movement of American wages downward, willing to see well-paying and secure manufacturing jobs sent abroad to other countries. It is high time now, however, particularly since the last election that we start to complete Ronald Reagan’s economic legacy by returning America to its preeminent position in the world. The United States should pursue national strategy to this end.
The Socrates Project utilized all source intelligence and determined by examining competition worldwide that the U.S. and its organizations had begun losing competitive advantage in the marketplace after World War II as a result of switching from technology-based planning to economic-based planning as the foundation of most decision-making. Socrates also foresaw that if the U.S. continued to rely upon economic-based planning with its inherent degradation of competitive advantage, the economic health of the U.S. would eventually go into a catastrophic freefall where no amount of economic maneuvering would be able to stop it. Socrates “saw” that China via an aggressive use of technology-based planning was, in effect, rapidly building itself into the next world superpower atop the wreckage of U.S. manufacturing industries and systemic failure to apply technology strategically to marketplace coordination and real goods and services output. China was outmaneuvering the US and its organizations in the acquisition and utilization of worldwide technology purposefully, in order to decimate America's ability to generate competitive advantage long-term and to ensure a maximum competitive advantage across the full range of markets and industries well into the future.
The Socrates Project developed a highly advanced form of technology-based planning called automated innovation to restore America’s competitiveness. In automated innovation, the process for acquiring and utilizing technology for a competitive advantage, including research and development, is automated so that it can be executed with unprecedented speed, efficiency and agility. Automated innovation enables the U.S. and its major public and private organizations to consistently outmaneuver China in the exploitation of technology, in order to acquire and maintain maximum competitive advantage. Automated innovation would thereby greatly increase corporate revenues too. A Socrates Project system was deployed under Reagan and is credited with helping bring our country back economically after the devastating Carter years, when so many key industries were losing position in global competition. After the first President Bush abolished the Socrates Project, the basis of the Socrates initiative moved into the private sector where it was refined since the 1980s.
Contemporary debate in terms of how best to reduce the U.S. national debt and close federal budget deficits must include a third leg as it were, and not just the tired rhetorical tug-of-war between the need and desire to increase taxes or to cut spending. What needs to happen is that private businesses must increase their revenues in a significant and sustained way, in order to grow the economic pie and bring in more tax revenue towards retiring the debt and living within budget means. Political debate must include more than the usual suspects. Corporations and businesses have to refrain from mere economic shell games that claim profit as they hollow out their insides or lay off more American workers.
Businesses grow when the tax and trade policies are less regressive, when public-private partnerships produce the tools they need to have a real technology-based competitive edge. The U.S. Government and various State Governments should look into tech-based planning and associated tools, in order to fully address their sagging economies and mounting debt burdens. The problems we face are unique and systemic and not entirely cyclic in nature. To address the economic health of the U.S., Congress should move resolutely towards reexamination of President Reagan’s Socrates Project and the swift deployment of an upgraded and reconstituted Socrates system enabled with 21st century technology, in order to usher in automated innovation and return us to the deliberate path of sustained economic prosperity and a choice of what’s best for America.
Thursday, December 9, 2010
Automated Innovation Revolution Key to Rebuilding, Advancing U.S. Economy (Issue #479)
To rebuild America’s competitiveness, it was obvious from the vantage point of the Socrates intelligence project, established by Michael C. Sekora during Reagan’s second term that America had to re-introduce technology-based planning as the foundation for decision-making. On the other hand, the U.S. could not simply revert to or adopt the same level of technology-based planning U.S. decision-makers had before World War II in industry or the public sector. In order to regain economic health and sustain economic superpower status, U.S. decision-makers needed to execute a level of technology-based planning designed in the Information Age and surpassing that being executed in China, India and elsewhere.
To borrow terminology from our World War II Pacific strategy, what the US needed to do was to leap-frog the technology-based or “tech-based” planning of those other countries. Part of the arduous analysis required in order to do this entailed the Socrates team mapping out the evolution of tech-based planning literally since the dawn of mankind. In so doing, two more things became obvious. First, tech-based planning (and mankind itself) makes an evolutionary leap forward every few hundred years—for example, the scientific revolution, the industrial revolution, and so on. Second, mankind appeared altogether poised to make the next big evolutionary leap forward with tech-based planning, what Sekora referred to as the automated innovation revolution.
In the automated innovation revolution, the entire process for acquiring and utilizing technology (research and development, tech-alliances, etc.) is standardized and automated. The result is that the acquisition and utilization of technology can be executed with previously unimaginable speed, efficiency and agility—producing an endless, rapid stream of products and services based on technology breakthroughs that are automatically generated and utilized at amazingly fast rates. Resources become unified spontaneously through the application of usable information.
The Socrates team saw that if the U.S. was to generate and lead the automated innovation revolution, it would ensure America’s competitiveness and economic health for many future generations. The Socrates team designed, built and demonstrated a proof-of-principle version of the automated innovation system. The Socrates Project’s automated innovation system would generate another major benefit for the U.S., in that, it enabled public and private organizations throughout the U.S. to work together in a self-determined, highly symbiotic fashion—the result being that technology and the full range of various resources throughout the U.S. might be utilized in a highly coherent but flexible and independent fashion, increasing the competitive advantage of the U.S. and its private and public organizations, and still be fully compatible with democratic-republican principles and the free enterprise system.
A briefing was prepared and shown to President Reagan and his key advisors, which demonstrated conclusively both the threat posed by China’s and India’s tech-based planning approach, as well as the unprecedented, long-term competitive advantage the U.S. would be able to capture by generating and leading the automated innovation revolution. A relatively straightforward deployment of interface terminals to access the world’s technology information using advanced artificial intelligence software and all source intelligence data, would enable symbiotic relationships between U.S. public and private organizations to develop. A quick consensus emerged in the Reagan Administration that the full Socrates automated innovation system should be built and installed at a separate and independent government agency to support U.S. industry and a few government agencies with a valid need for the information.
President Reagan viewed “Socrates” as an innovative and prudential step for the United States to take for practical and self-interested reasons, given some grim long-term economic predictors. He also averred with the Socrates team that it would probably lead mankind into its next evolutionary step and that it was far better for the United States to set terms and parameters in this step rather than, say, China. Indeed, deployment of an automated innovation system would address the pressing economic challenges posed by China and India and the ever increasing likelihood that America would find herself displaced as the world’s premier economic powerhouse. At the same time and just as importantly, if the system were implemented deliberately for access by multiple users and using objective protocols with the proper oversight mechanism, the system would amount to having a brand new and powerful tool for superior performance with virtually no down side—the caveat for deployment being, that it must remain true to cherished American principles of private property, individual initiative, limited government and free markets.
Unfortunately before the draft executive order could be finalized and signed by President Reagan, his second term came to an end. By that time moreover, Reagan had personal health issues to attend to, albeit he did leave with full confidence that his vice-president and incoming president, George H.W. Bush would continue with “Socrates” to complete his impressive economic legacy. When Bush came into office, however, he abolished the Socrates Project in deference to Japanese demands; to reap a so-called post-Cold War “peace dividend”; and to usher in his own idealized “new world order” policy of unabashed globalism—without the same priority being given to parochial or exclusive U.S. economic interests.
Today with the U.S. having lost industry after industry overseas, and Americans’ standard of living in rapid decline, it is past time to complete the task that President Reagan charted. A legislatively authorized Socrates-like project would be a fitting tribute to the man whose 100th birthday anniversary we celebrate in February 2011. More critically, the automated innovation system is a necessary key to America’s economic wellbeing moving forward in the Information Age, against cutthroat market and currency manipulations being waged by authoritarian regimes and aggressive, culturally competing nation-states. The U.S. must generate and lead the automated innovation revolution, but while it is still possible to do so, the time is also far spent in terms of America’s economic eclipse. We must therefore move quickly and with resolution to do it, before it is too late and unsettling downward trends become irreversible.
To borrow terminology from our World War II Pacific strategy, what the US needed to do was to leap-frog the technology-based or “tech-based” planning of those other countries. Part of the arduous analysis required in order to do this entailed the Socrates team mapping out the evolution of tech-based planning literally since the dawn of mankind. In so doing, two more things became obvious. First, tech-based planning (and mankind itself) makes an evolutionary leap forward every few hundred years—for example, the scientific revolution, the industrial revolution, and so on. Second, mankind appeared altogether poised to make the next big evolutionary leap forward with tech-based planning, what Sekora referred to as the automated innovation revolution.
In the automated innovation revolution, the entire process for acquiring and utilizing technology (research and development, tech-alliances, etc.) is standardized and automated. The result is that the acquisition and utilization of technology can be executed with previously unimaginable speed, efficiency and agility—producing an endless, rapid stream of products and services based on technology breakthroughs that are automatically generated and utilized at amazingly fast rates. Resources become unified spontaneously through the application of usable information.
The Socrates team saw that if the U.S. was to generate and lead the automated innovation revolution, it would ensure America’s competitiveness and economic health for many future generations. The Socrates team designed, built and demonstrated a proof-of-principle version of the automated innovation system. The Socrates Project’s automated innovation system would generate another major benefit for the U.S., in that, it enabled public and private organizations throughout the U.S. to work together in a self-determined, highly symbiotic fashion—the result being that technology and the full range of various resources throughout the U.S. might be utilized in a highly coherent but flexible and independent fashion, increasing the competitive advantage of the U.S. and its private and public organizations, and still be fully compatible with democratic-republican principles and the free enterprise system.
A briefing was prepared and shown to President Reagan and his key advisors, which demonstrated conclusively both the threat posed by China’s and India’s tech-based planning approach, as well as the unprecedented, long-term competitive advantage the U.S. would be able to capture by generating and leading the automated innovation revolution. A relatively straightforward deployment of interface terminals to access the world’s technology information using advanced artificial intelligence software and all source intelligence data, would enable symbiotic relationships between U.S. public and private organizations to develop. A quick consensus emerged in the Reagan Administration that the full Socrates automated innovation system should be built and installed at a separate and independent government agency to support U.S. industry and a few government agencies with a valid need for the information.
President Reagan viewed “Socrates” as an innovative and prudential step for the United States to take for practical and self-interested reasons, given some grim long-term economic predictors. He also averred with the Socrates team that it would probably lead mankind into its next evolutionary step and that it was far better for the United States to set terms and parameters in this step rather than, say, China. Indeed, deployment of an automated innovation system would address the pressing economic challenges posed by China and India and the ever increasing likelihood that America would find herself displaced as the world’s premier economic powerhouse. At the same time and just as importantly, if the system were implemented deliberately for access by multiple users and using objective protocols with the proper oversight mechanism, the system would amount to having a brand new and powerful tool for superior performance with virtually no down side—the caveat for deployment being, that it must remain true to cherished American principles of private property, individual initiative, limited government and free markets.
Unfortunately before the draft executive order could be finalized and signed by President Reagan, his second term came to an end. By that time moreover, Reagan had personal health issues to attend to, albeit he did leave with full confidence that his vice-president and incoming president, George H.W. Bush would continue with “Socrates” to complete his impressive economic legacy. When Bush came into office, however, he abolished the Socrates Project in deference to Japanese demands; to reap a so-called post-Cold War “peace dividend”; and to usher in his own idealized “new world order” policy of unabashed globalism—without the same priority being given to parochial or exclusive U.S. economic interests.
Today with the U.S. having lost industry after industry overseas, and Americans’ standard of living in rapid decline, it is past time to complete the task that President Reagan charted. A legislatively authorized Socrates-like project would be a fitting tribute to the man whose 100th birthday anniversary we celebrate in February 2011. More critically, the automated innovation system is a necessary key to America’s economic wellbeing moving forward in the Information Age, against cutthroat market and currency manipulations being waged by authoritarian regimes and aggressive, culturally competing nation-states. The U.S. must generate and lead the automated innovation revolution, but while it is still possible to do so, the time is also far spent in terms of America’s economic eclipse. We must therefore move quickly and with resolution to do it, before it is too late and unsettling downward trends become irreversible.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)