Remember all that talk in the 1980s about the end of the American Century, the last gasps of the
dying economic superpower? We were going the way of all history's great world powers. We
were watching the waning of the glory years, the setting of our sun.
All that talk may have been dead wrong.
When you step back and view events from a historical perspective, our prospects look much better. In fact, they look really good.
The Industrial Revolution was born in England and spread to Europe first. The 19th century was a European Age, with England the Great Power on whose lands the sun never set.
It wasn't until the Second World War in the middle of the 20th century that the United States emerged as the preeminent world power, and its economic engines began to set the pace for the world. The world economy that America dominated through the 1950s and 1960s arguably was the culmination of the Industrial Age economy. But it's far from America's last act.
This Digital Age is being born in the United States, and for some good reasons:
Americans are the ultimate tinkerers. We're obsessed with gadgets, machinery and technology. We've been that way from the beginning. Thomas Jefferson not only wrote the Declaration of Independence; he invented the dumbwaiter. People like Thomas Edison, the inventor of too many things to mention, become our national heroes.
The world's first computer -- and almost every major development in digital technologies since -- has sprung from American minds. From mainframes to personal computers to the Net, the United States has been at the forefront of every breakthrough and has dominated the emerging markets that flowed from them. In the markets America doesn't dominate, competitors generally copied and refined the original concepts.
The Digital Age is not simply about the computer and telecommunications industries that American firms largely dominate. It's broader, deeper than that.
The very things that we lamented were our only competitive world products in the 1980s are the very products that rise in importance in the Digital Age. This age of information is about content. And Americans, without question, are the world's premier content suppliers -- dominating the world's entertainment and media industries.
The American movie industry is an 800-pound gorilla. American television shows can be watched almost anywhere on the planet. American music spans the globe: New releases can be found in street markets in Bangkok almost as soon as they get to Best Buy.
American culture -- from Levi's jeans to Big Macs -- is fast becoming world culture, for better or worse. That's being spurred by the fact that English is fast becoming the de facto world language.
Also, the Digital Age is the age of the knowledge worker. And right now Americans universities are the world's leading research centers and institutions of higher education, teaching many of the brightest minds from other countries.
On an even more fundamental level, America's culture and society is an incubator for the very qualities that will increasingly be needed in the Digital Age:
Of course, there are also plenty of major challenges we must overcome, such as an underskilled work force, growing illiteracy and rising social problems.
All cultures have their strong points, unique features and world contributions. The Europeans have their social conscience and the Japanese their collective mentality of teamwork, to name but a few.
But none of them may prepare their people better for the rigors of the coming Digital Age than what we've got right here.
