The Impulse To Know, and Not Know

In America, at the present time - these two impulses (direct opposites) are active. But few are aware of this.

America had been an Industrial country, having little idea of what this entailed - except they were not supposed to think about it. The Industrial machinery worked better, if the people in it, did not get in the way. This is what built the Railroads, and the Manufacturing, that made America rich.

Then along came the Computer, operated by Software, that was built by people - that had to know how it worked.

In the Nineties, when I worked in Silicon Valley - I could see companies using the Industrial model, to write software - that never worked. Everyone could see this wasn't working, but could not understand why. And the whole edifice collapsed in 2000.

Out of this wreckage, new approaches to making computers (and their software) software emerged. Two cultures now coexisted, uncomfortably - with little awareness of each other. But with more awareness on the Software side.

On the Software side, people are thinking intensely - about Building Evolutionary Architectures, for example. It's not hard to see how this applied to the larger world, that Software is part of. And this knowledge transfer made the Old Guard uneasy.

And has produced a powerful reaction - in the Presidency of Trump.