Science & Technology

I was one of those kids who grew up in the '60s mesmerized by the space program. I actually, geekily, wrote NASA regularly requesting pictures of astronauts and sending in my own ideas for spacecraft, mission patches and the like. They would reply with thick envelopes full of press releases and eight by tens of my astronaut heroes, glossy proof that in our times anything was possible.

I watched the moon landing from summer camp where my store of newspaper clippings on space shots was the focus of considerable commentary (and not in a good way...leading to plenty of taunting, hazing, and one night alone on a tiny mosquito infested island in the middle of our lake). We had a small black and white television in the lodge up there in Readfield, Maine and we watched the ghostly images of Neil Armstrong leaping off the lunar lander ("yes...yes...the Lunar Excursion Module...the L.E.M...." cries out the little geek with black-framed glasses sitting as close as possible to the screen fully aware that his outburst will lead to the short-sheeting of his bed). It was not just moving for me, it was life defining. It was evidence that ours was an era apart and it was a harbinger of more amazing things to come. We didn't need Harry Potter. We had real magic happening before our eyes.

Sadly, in terms of the space program, that day 40 years ago this week was a high water mark emotionally if not technologically and in the years since we seem to have lost our sense of adventure and our connection to the ancient human impulse to constantly explore as far as possible beyond the limits of our knowledge. Our decision not to build as we might have on the achievements of the Apollo program is to me a sign we suffered a failure of national imagination.

During the presidential campaign last year, there was a conscious effort to draw analogies between John Kennedy, the symbolic father of the space program, and Barack Obama. There was a clear sense that association with the Kennedys would offer Obama a "right stuff" infusion. Personally, I found the whole business pretty distasteful, in part because I feel that Kennedy is almost certainly the most over-rated American political leader of the 20th Century and that there is an unsavory dimension to his history and that of his family that neither reflects well on them, nor on those who choose to overlook it. I also don't much buy into that greatness by association formula that is so popular within spin community.

That said, here we are six months into the Obama administration and there are strong indications that the president did not take the analogies lightly, that he is in a real way aspiring to the Kennedy example. Indeed, despite the inevitable grappling with both the learning curve and the curve balls thrown by circumstance, I think it is possible to argue that Barack Obama more than any recent president has sought to set goals that if achieved would have massive, global and ennobling consequences.

In fact, in a few key areas at least the President of the United States has broken free of the gravitational pull of Washington incrementalism and he already has us embarked on not one but perhaps as many as three different moonshots, national initiatives of importance comparable to those we cheered when back when British Open runner-up Tom Watson was still young.

One of these is closely related to the dark underside of the space program, the nuclear arms race that had us all as kids cowering in our school hallways beneath the winter coats that were supposed to protect us from thermonuclear fireballs. It is Obama's pledge, made in Prague, to seek the reduction and eventual elimination of nuclear weapons programs that resonates most like Kennedy's commitment to put a man on the moon in ten years. It seems impossible. It is redolent with hope. It would mark a breakthrough in the history of human civilization. In fact, it would mark multiple breakthroughs including both advancing the cause of peace and security worldwide and moving us toward more effective next generation global governance mechanisms. In this latter case, the breakthrough would come because there is no way to achieve Obama's goal without a successor to the Non-Proliferation Treaty that guarantees the international community the right to inspect at will and the right to use all means including force to ensure compliance.   

Another existential threat, climate change, is the target of another of Obama's moonshots. He has powerfully articulated his belief that global warming and continued reliance on fossil fuels exposes the United States and the world to manifold risks. Finally, the United States is seeking to play a leadership role in crafting an international agreement to reduce green house gas emissions. At the same time, the U.S. is investing unprecedented sums in cultivating alternative energy forms and finding ways to capture and harmlessly store carbon. Success on this front could well be the defining achievement of the current generation of world leaders. (Interesting what a vitally important role the Department of Energy, long the black hole of the U.S. bureaucracy, plays in two of these signature Obama initiatives.)

A third moonshot is the president's commitment to fix America's broken health care system. While this may seem prosaic and hardly as elevating as launching men into space or ending the threat of a nuclear or climatic end to human life on earth, nothing less than the role of the United States as a leading nation depends on our ability to get our arms around the massive underfunded liability we face in retirement health care. At the same time, when the last major economy on earth finally agrees with all the other developed nations that healthcare is a fundamental human right, it will represent a watershed in our view of the nature and role of governments. And the costs associated with this particular challenge will almost certainly exceed those associated with the space program...by at least 250 times. (The roughly 180 billion 2009 dollars it cost to put a man on the moon is roughly the same as was allocated for the AIG bailout. So by that measure, already the Obama Administration has plenty more moonshots to its credit.)

Each of these objectives is worthy and each is a massive undertaking. Any administration that accomplished one would secure its place in history. Throw in a few other largish objectives -- like achieving peace in the greater Middle East -- and there's no denying that America's long drought of vision and ambitions on a grand scale is over. We're no longer in the school uniforms or "don't ask, don't tell" territory any more, Toto. (Of course, it's worth remembering that we put a man on the moon at the same time as we fought the war in Vietnam, launched the "Great Society", implemented the Civil Rights Act of 1964...all effectively under the remarkable and under-appreciated leadership of Lyndon Johnson.)

But of course, the reason that today we are seeing replay after replay of Kennedy's pledge to put a man on the moon in a decade is because we actually achieved the goal. As of now, all three of Obama's moonshots seem even more unlikely to be achieved than did putting a human on a satellite of earth 240,000 miles away. But for the moment, it's worth celebrating the fact that we are thinking big again, that we are still game for attempting the worthy but seemingly impossible which is why I am declaring today a cynicism free national holiday in honor of the imagination, chutzpah, and hard work that made the achievement of July 21, 1969 possible. I even feel my imagination stirring a bit. But rest assured, I am not planning on building a model spent nuclear fuel disposal facility in my bedroom or sending fan mail to climate envoy Todd Stern. The last thing I need is for my wife to start short-sheeting our bed. 

Matt Stroshane/Getty Images

As Barack Obama trotted the globe toward the end of last week, back home a story on the technology front was creating a bit of a buzz. Google announced its plans to introduce a new operating system called Chrome OS that tech sector experts saw as a frontal assault on Microsoft. Chrome would go after Microsoft where it lived, attempting to offer an alternative to its Windows franchise that has dominated since the dawn of the PC era it helped make possible. But Chrome would employ a new paradigm, the idea the future of computers is in harnessing the power of the web, that vast computing power, storage capacity and other resources can be found in the "clouds" of computers that are linked together in the Internet universe. 

Chrome's full potential is far off. It will first only be introduced for netbooks later this year. Laptop and desktop versions are many months away. But reading about the announcement and talking to a bunch of computer users, I came away with the sense that the market was viewing this introduction with great hope.

Why? Well, in large part because Microsoft is seen as having become a complacent bully. Microsoft was a tech darling in the 1990s, a symbol of American ingenuity and a likely engine of future American growth. When its market capitalization grew greater than that of GM, it made headlines. Ironically, this ascendancy came at the same time as America's post-Cold War assumption of its role of sole-superpower. In the mid-90s, America and Microsoft were clearly the future of the world. 

Then both started to abuse their power. America, in the wake of 9/11, undercut the international system it built, rhetorically flaunted its hallowed values and then crudely and repeatedly undercut them in its behaviors. Microsoft went from a symbol of the garage-launched entrepreneurial energy of the tech revolution to being a ruthless crusher of competitors. In fact, it became so dominant, that it felt it could foist on the American public products that didn't work, were full of bugs, were vulnerable to security breaches and, as in the case of Vista, should never have been released in the first place.

Microsoft blew it. Today, consumers and specialists alike are rooting for it to fail. (Hence the love affair with Apple which is seen as the resilient insurgent, the better unconventional choice, even in its advertisements.) Fortunately, for tech consumers worldwide, the growth of Microsoft and the tech sector led to the birth of competitors like Google (founded just over a decade ago.) Google itself is now so large that many wonder if it will become complacent or employ ever-more unfair competitive practices. But it is also big enough that it actually has a chance to undo Microsoft's stranglehold on the inside of the world's computers (of all sizes and shapes), perhaps the most important real estate on the planet earth today (which is appropriately largely virtual).

Under George W. Bush, America also blew the opportunity to consolidate the position it achieved as victor of the Cold War. For years now, many have been rooting for America to fail as well. Certainly, this was never so clear as in the calls for an end to American capitalism during the peak of the financial crisis. But here is where America's fate has thus far diverged from that of its industrial doppelganger Microsoft (the fall of GM, Microsoft's predecessor in the flagship company role, echoes and amplifies many of the points made above...it too grew complacent, ignored the consumer...and invited the competition that has crushed it.) Because while the American brand endured untold damage during the previous administration and continues to be damaged with each passing week of this economic crisis for which we are seen to be responsible, there is still no alternative brand with anything like the appeal of our system, our values or, even today, our track record for creating opportunity for our people.

There is No Alternative (TINA) was a favorite watchword of Margaret Thatcher, used by her to indicate that market capitalism was the only way, and used by her supporters to indicate that she was the only viable option available for saving Britain from the slough of despond it had entered in the 70s. Her enemies were the socialist ideas that had grown so popular in Europe in the post-war era. Soviet communism cooperated by failing during her years in power. And she, of course, spoke for a perspective that was not just British, but was embraced by her soul-brother Ronald Reagan. In a way, it all seems very old-fashioned now. That world seems far away with the Cold War over, the G8 on its last legs, emerging powers rising, America's brand so damaged. And yet, search the horizon. America's greatest ally remains TINA.

Barack Obama can lose his star luster and conduct only marginally effective, workman-like diplomacy as he did last week, and still, post-Bush, post-Iraq, post-Guantanamo, post-Lehman America remains at the center of every critical discussion, the most important player, the basis for all comparisons. China, the rising rival, gains its power from descriptions of how it will have an economy equal to America's within decades...but it is no real alternative. Its political system is defective, fraying at its ethnic edges. Its economic growth is admirable but when we get to the far side of this crisis and the world is depending on China to pick up the slack in the place of diminished American demand, we will see that there are perhaps 50 million Chinese who are anything like Western consumers, a true addition to the market roughly the size of a mid-sized European economy. China with Russia and others seek to sell an alternative to the dollar and the response of world markets is deeply skeptical. Other revolutionary voices for the most part echo the failed approaches of the past.

Had there been a good alternative, now would have been a great moment for it to emerge. In fact, it is perhaps the most telling indictment of the alternatives that are out there...politically, economically, socially, in terms of world leadership...that after such a bad streak, that nothing is really taking hold as Plan B...which creates a terrific opportunity for Barack Obama and his team. We can learn from the Microsoft and General Motors examples. We can seek to adapt to new realities. The trick is going to be convincing the world that a United States that grows at 2 percent a year (which may well be the average for the next 5 years) offers a better approach than a China or an India that grows at 10. Or that the United States offers a better way of life for its people or is a country that deserves the leadership role it has.

It is clear to me that absent a strong recovery, real healthcare reform that meets the needs of all Americans, genuine leadership on climate, and an effort to address the flaws in our system that are exacerbating inequality, sooner or later a weakened, necessarily more inward looking U.S. will find that TINA has flown the coop. It is a telling irony that left-leaning development advocate Susan George offered as a successor to TINA, TATA...which means "there are thousands of alternatives" but also echoes the name of the Indian entrepreneur who now owns the auto brands that were among the British industrial flagships of the Thatcher era (Jaguar and Land Rover) and is the producer of the Nano, the small car designed for the emerging market demands of tomorrow. It is a reminder that things do change and that history suggests that almost certainly there will be alternatives.

But with some luck, America can play the role adopted by the innovators who last at the top, resisting the complacency that TINA's love brings and by seeking to become the even better alternative to ourselves the era requires.

Sean Gallup/Getty Images

It's only Wednesday and it has been a fraught week. In fact, I am totally ready for the weekend. In just the past three days, we have watched as:

Obama conducted an entire televised press conference without once accepting a question from a reporter from a major newspaper. Personally I think this reveals more about Obama's weaknesses than those associated with the newspaper industry. (Meanwhile, based on his performance Tuesday night, our President simultaneously started a rumor that there are actually two Obamas, one an inspirational leader who Michelle sometimes takes out for big public occasions, and the other who is a tax accountant with the charisma of a tube sock.) Meanwhile, Obama's economic crash test dummy Tim Geithner testified on the Hill winning kudos from the market but gradually grimmer and grimmer assessments from economists and thoughtful writers like the FT's Martin Wolf. 

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton headed to Mexico even as Obama framed that country's drug violence as a top concern of the U.S. and hearings on the subject were a highlight on Capitol Hill.  Personally I am worried about Secretary Clinton and it's not all that Mexican violence that I feel puts her at risk.  Rather, if history is any indicator, the real danger she faces is associated with the fact that she currently has a higher approval rating than the President. (If she doubts me on this, she should call Colin Powell and see how that worked out for him.)

Housing starts were up, markets were up and yet somehow it did nothing to tame the throbbing headache and sinking sensation in the pit of the stomach that has been reported by well, everyone everywhere. It's gotten to the point that I'm comforted by those  reports of a killer asteroid hurtling toward the planet because it looks the giant Advil we all need. (Just kidding. There is no asteroid. You are still going to have to figure out how to survive during retirement on the $11.26 left in your 401-K.)

In other developments in astro-physics, black hole of charisma Gordon Brown went to the European Parliament and was gutted and filleted like a trout by a British MEP named Daniel Hannan (which you can view yourself thanks to the wonders of YouTube). And speaking of YouTube, the Chinese government once again made the world's most populous country seem very small indeed by blocking the site after a video the Chinese assert was a fake seemed to show a Chinese policeman beating a Tibetan demonstrator to death. Finally on the foreign policy front, the seductive Bibi Netanyahu managed to get Ehud Barak (who once infiltrated Syria in a drag...draw your own conclusions) and the Labor Party to clamber aboard his coalition's bandwagon, thus giving it more diversity and political credibility. (It has been hinted that should Barak ever again appear in a dress he could face prosecution and perhaps physical danger from UN High Commissioner for Crimes Against Fashion Tim Gunn.)

Yet for all these things, or perhaps in spite of them, we may well look back on this week and determine that the most important thing that happened was that Ratan Tata, Indian mega-mogul, fulfilled what many thought was an impossible personal ambition when he launched his new $2,200 Nano microcar. It is, as far as an "everyman's car" precisely what the Ford Model T hoped to be, but of course, for most of the planet, was not. It truly opens the door to car ownership for hundreds of millions of people. If it is as successful as predicted, and cars, being produced at a rate of 1,000,000 per year according to Tata, are back-ordered into 2010, it will undoubtedly signal a boom in an entirely new category of vehicles. Chevrolet plans to launch a micro car next year...if there is a Chevrolet next year. And while the prospect of the proliferation of cars like the Nano creates new challenges regarding pollution (although Tata says it has lower emissions than a motorcycle), because of their light weight and the limited speed or horsepower seen as necessary for such vehicles, the category could become an area in which alternative energy options are particularly effective. Even without this though, UN Framework Convention on Climate Change executive secretary Yvo de Boer said, "I am not concerned about it (the Tata Nano) because people in India have the same aspirational rights to own cars as people elsewhere in the world." 

The world being what it is, of course, today, two days after the Nano launch, Standard and Poors downgraded Tata Motors due to the fact that they didn't feel even high demand for the vehicle could offset the company's other problems. This is a good news bad news story. Because if the global economy continues to circle the drain, there may be increased demand for the Nano in many formerly developed countries. Like ours. In fact, Tata plans a U.S. launch of the vehicle in three years. Tata is clearly a visionary. I wonder what he knows that we don't know.