Yesterday I joined a broad set of academics, technologists, and policymakers at Science: A New Golden Age Summit, where OSTP director Michael Kratsios unveiled over $6 billion in commitments in support of scientific advancement in America.

Exciting stuff and it reminded me that I had partially composed some thoughts on the 250th anniversary of America. Given how central American science and technology have been to my life and career, it felt like a good moment to finish them.

Dogs, lawn darts, and grills

I vividly remember asking my dad when the next American centennial would be. It was summer outside Carlisle, MA, and we were hosting a huge neighborhood cookout to celebrate. Between the lawn darts, illegal fireworks, dogs, and burgers, 6-year-old me thought this was a much improved version of the previous year’s 4th of July party and wanted to know if we’d get another one next year. He laughed and pointed out that he wouldn’t be around for the next one — he almost made it to the sesquicentennial — but thought maybe I would.

My dad was always a believer in American science. I didn’t know it at the time, but the cookout was full of scientists and engineers at the cutting edge of the space race. Members of teams who had built Corona, Hexagon, Apollo, the soon to touch down Viking landers, and other, still classified programs.

(My dad, as both an avid photographer and photogrammetric engineer, was forever tickled that the first photo his camera took on Mars was of its foot.)

Museums and computers

As a kid on the East Coast, I was lucky to spend a ton of time at the perfect museums to supercharge my interests in science and tech. We were regulars at the Museum of Science in Cambridge, as well as the Air and Space Museum whenever we were in DC. I don’t think I ever was more stunned by a machine than the first time I got to get close to the X-15. Like the SR-71, the X-15 felt — feels — like an object from the far future, not something built on 70-year-old ideas and technologies.

The 70s were also the time of my first video game experiences — with home games pioneered by the RF modulator invented at Lockheed Sanders, coincidentally my first job after the US Navy. At the Museum of Science, you could play tic-tac-toe against a computer — just like we’d see in WarGames — and soon I’d have a chance to write my first code on a Commodore PET at school.

Analog to digital

College at USNA, followed by Nuclear Power School, also reflected ongoing American advances in science and technology. While it wasn’t the World Wide Web yet, ARPANET had transformed into NSFNET and universities around the US were accessible via FTP and other services. Moore’s Law drove the power of digital computers to new heights, starting what would become a wholesale transition of analog fields to digital. My academic side hustle — computer science — became an increasing focus and ultimately the foundation of my civilian career.

Lockheed led to videogames and Second Life, starting what would become a recurring pattern of linking the products I was building to the advancements of high-performance computing. Mobile and VR at Facebook. LLMs at Google. Decision systems at Onebrief.

250

None of this would be possible without the 250-year experiment in governance, democracy, education, and military strength that is the United States. Growing up in New England, the War for American Independence is incredibly vivid, so trips we’d make to the Museum of Science would often also include a visit to Old Ironsides¹. As the docents would explain, USS Constitution was an unusual design, built to fight pirates at a time when America was young and other navies had larger, better-armed ships of the line. How her design saved her during the War of 1812. And how, in a most American of stories, public outcry prevented her from being scrapped and led to her ongoing preservation.

All of which leaves me thinking a lot about 250. As a nation, we are still young by historical standards (ancient Egypt, after all, needed archaeology 1000 years BCE to understand their own history) but our history has informed and driven much of what makes the world we live in today.

And looking forward, we have pioneered and delivered the science and technology that will drive the next waves of human advancement. We have tremendous challenges to overcome but I am proud of what we have accomplished together and the future we are building towards.

1. Yes, I know the Constitution was laid down after the war ended. I didn’t learn about Bonhomme Richard until I got to USNA. Plus it would be substantially harder to visit. ↩