America 2.0

Someone, sometime soon is going to start describing the climb out of this impressive hole we’ve dug for ourselves, and they’re going to call it “America 2.0”. Clever, yes. We need a new version of ourselves and that’s going to involve bright, unexpected ideas from those we least expect them from, and they’re going to strike you as impossible. All you need to do to understand these terrifyingly ambitious ideas is to look back at what we’ve already done to understand what we can do.

From Rands In Repose, called "The Makers of Things," on how the building of the Brooklyn Bridge applies to the troubles America faces today.

None of the malaise we face these days compares, historically, to what came before (see: Civil War, Great Depression, 9/11). The blogger's point is that from all those catastrophic woes sprang creativity.

[Via Daring Fireball.]