Part Four (plus the link)
These memorials of American innovation and strength, in many fields, are just a small percentage of the whole. A new era of innovation is upon us now that will have a profound impact on the ways all nations interact: the Internet Age.
· It took dozens of contributors to make that possible. John Atanasoff, the son of a Bulgarian immigrant, hired a student, Clifford Berry, and they created the Atanasoff-Berry Computer. That ‘ABC’ computer wasn’t patented because WW2 intervened, but it was the first electronic digital computer. Next came William Shockley, John Bardeen and William Brattain, who invented the transistor, essential to all modern electronics. When Shockley founded Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory near his boyhood home of Palo Alto, that began something else: Silicon Valley.
· An Wang, a Chinese immigrant, created a device that regulated the flow of magnetic energy and the team of Robert Everett and Jay Forrester advanced it further, creating an early form of random access memory in the first real-time electronic digital computer.
· Rear Admiral Grace Murray Hopper invented the computer compiler which permitted automated programming of computer language, then created the first user-friendly business software program, COBOL.
· Harold Rosen created the geosynchronous satellite. With its first launches in the Sixties, it has become essential to telecommunications, television broadcasting and the Internet.
· The US Dept of Defense, trying to create a failsafe communications system that could survive a nuclear attack, developed Arpanet, which was the precursor to today’s Internet. Robert Metcalfe invented the Local Area Network technology known as the Ethernet which links tens of millions of PCs worldwide on the Internet.
· Steven Jobs and Steve Wozniak created the first Personal Computer with the Apple I.
· Robert Maurer, Donald Keck and Peter Schultz developed optical waveguide fibers, more commonly known as fiber optics.
· Just a few years ago, Michael Lim, an immigrant from South Korea, teamed with M. Jalal Khan, an immigrant from Pakistan, and Thomas Murphy to create an entirely new version of the integrated optical add/drop filter, increasing the capacity and efficiency of fiber optic lines.
· Cardinal Warde, an immigrant from Barbados, holds ten key patents on spatial light modulators, displays, and optical information processing systems and has co-developed devices that have improved wireless communications, holography and optical computing. Among other projects, he currently is working on the development of optical neural-network co-processors that may provide future PC's with rudimentary brain-like processing.
Once again, these are just a few examples of many contributors to the field of information technology that now permit billions of dollars of online commerce to take place throughout the world. But more important, in my view, is its capacity for hundreds of millions of people to contact each other instantaneously, person to person or in groups.
To me this represents a new hope, that these contacts can bypass the communication processes of governments and the corporate dominated media, to relay events as they occur, without the filters of diplomatic ‘spin’ or business sensitivities that can distort the facts. Further, this wired world allows individuals and groups to hold vital discussions about events, thoughts, ideas and emotions, to discover common concerns, overcome stereotypes and preconceived notions about each other, and forge alliances working towards common goals and dreams.
And that’s not all. Without time to travel, an airline ticket, a hotel reservation, museum or concert tickets, more of our American memorials can be accessed online. The art of Maxfield Parrish, Georgia O’Keefe, Mary Cassatt or Andy Warhol. The compositions of Aaron Copland or George Gershwin. The big band sounds of Glenn Miller or Tommy Dorsey. The jazz of Coltrane, Mingus, Monk, Ellington, Parker and Davis. The blues of Billie Holiday, Janis Joplin or Muddy Waters. The soul of Marvin Gaye, Aretha, or Stevie Wonder. The country of Hank Williams, Patsy Cline, Earl Scruggs, or the Dixie Chicks. Folk and rock originals like Elvis, Little Richard, Carole King, Nirvana, Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, Santana, Hendrix. The literature, poetry, acting, and comedy of hundreds of other talents. Authors and artists and musicians as yet undiscovered.
These, too, are American memorials, adding light and sound for the world to enjoy.
In the past year, since we lost the light, the sound, and the creative contributions of over 3,000 individuals, we’ve paid more attention to events in the Middle East than we ever have before. We were a nation that had hoped for peace, particularly for the Palestinians and Israelis, which several of our leaders have tried to facilitate.
And as we watched, we were not impressed at all, by the actions of the Israelis or the Palestinians. Yet as more time passed, we saw miniature versions of 9-11 occurring again and again and again, with the indiscriminate suicide attacks of Palestinians that clearly were aimed at groups of unarmed civilians.
As I watched, I began to wonder about all Palestinians. Surely these acts of violence represented the works of extremists, didn’t they? And the more I watched, the more I thought about that.
Where are the inventors and scientists and authors and actors and artists and musicians within the Palestinian present, and within its past? They must exist, but where is the knowledge of it? Rather glumly, I had to concede to myself that the sole achievement I could think of was airplane hijacking.
I was glad to discover I was wrong. Several websites pointed the blame finger at Israel or the Palestinians. Several others without an axe to grind pointed to earlier hijackings that involved neither.
But it does not negate my first question: what have the Palestinians contributed to the world? Too busy fighting Jews is not an acceptable answer, nor is poverty. My American list included slaves, orphans and folks who struggled from poverty to contribute.
Yet I continue to hope that the media displays only the acts of extremists, led by an extremist government. And that the majority of Palestinians care about their children, gripe about their government and struggle to make ends meet, just like I do.
I feel no kinship toward Arafat, but then, I feel just as distant from Sharon. Yet it is the Palestinian extremists blowing themselves up in crowds of civilians. And I keep wondering: Where is their Martin Luther King Jr. who’ll lead a nonviolent resistance and inspire them to have a dream?
The Palestinians... I look for their memorials.
And I am listening.
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Of the book of God
Thou art a copying,
A mirror wherein showed
The beauty of the King.
All God ever wrought
Dwelleth not apart;
All thou hast ever sought,
Find it in thy heart.
Jalal al-Din Rumi, Persian Sufi poet
Perhaps to outsiders, it seems that we do not have our fair share of war. I would say to them we know too much of war. If you would be tempted to war with us, you will know too much of war, too.
Perhaps it seems we are indifferent to others.
I would say to them, you do not know us enough:
LISTEN.
The Rent's Been Paid For Another Month
I walked the battlefields of Vicksburg once
its redoubts and trenches still existing
and row upon row upon row of crosses
How strange such waste should be uplifting.
It turned the corner of a demon's war
where brother fought cousin shot father killed friend
as dying men in pain cried for Mother
with no honor no glory just pain at the end.
Do the dead find relief when they hear that a nation
grows a little closer from the pain they felt?
Do they still hate Sherman or Nathan Forrest?
Did a lover's flame ever make their young hearts melt?
I never found answers to the many questions
All the mourning and misery was long dead too
I know not what God they held in their hearts
but this morning you're alive; I think I'll worship you.
That was written as my personal memorial for all who suffer and for all who mourn the costs extracted by those whose hate will not cease.
And this link sums up beautifully the strength of our compassion towards those who suffer and grieve:
wildflowerdesire.com
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End of series
Remember, if you wish to respond, use your creativity and reach high for beauty. Thank you. |
