The Next 100 Years

t h e co m p u t e r a n d a m e r i c a n c u lt u re
Let’s look at this from another perspective, that of technology. As the Amer­
ican Age opens, the United States has a vested interest in the destruction of 
traditional social patterns, which creates a certain amount of instability and 
gives the United States maximum room to maneuver. American culture is 
an uneasy melding of the Bible and the computer, of traditional values and 
radical innovation. But along with demography, it is the computer that is 
reshaping American culture and is the real foundation of American cultural 
hegemony. This will become extraordinarily important in the next hundred 
years. 
The computer represents both a radical departure from previous technol­
ogy and a new way of looking at reason. The purpose of a computer is the 
manipulation of quantitative data, that is, numbers. As a machine that ma­
nipulates data, it is a unique technology. But since it reduces all information— 
music, film, and the written word—to a number, it is also a unique way of 
looking at reason. 
The computer is based on binary logic. This simply means that it reads 
electrical charges, which are either negative or positive and are treated as a 0 
or a 1. It uses a string of these binary numbers to represent things we think 
of as being very simple. So the capital letter 
A 
is represented as 01000001. 

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t h e n e x t 1 0 0 y e a r s
The small letter 
a 
is 01100001. These strings of numbers are reorganized 
into machine language that in turn is managed by computer code written in 
any of a number of languages, from Basic to C++ to Java. 
If that seems complex, then simply remember this: To a computer, every­
thing is a number, from a letter on a screen to a bit of music. Everything is 
reduced to zeros and ones. In order to manage computers, completely artifi­
cial languages have been created. The purpose of those languages is getting 
the computer to use the data it has been given. 
But the computer can only manage things that can be expressed in bi­
nary code. It can play music, but it cannot write it (not well at least), or ex­
plain its beauty. It can store poetry but cannot explain its meaning. It can 
allow you to search every book imaginable, yet it cannot distinguish be­
tween good and bad grammar, at least not well. It is superb at what it can 
do, but it excludes a great deal of what the human mind is capable of doing. 
It is a tool. 
It is a powerful and seductive tool. Yet it operates using a logic that lacks 
other, more complex, elements of reason. The computer focuses ruthlessly 
on things that can be represented in numbers. By doing so, it also seduces 
people into thinking that other aspects of knowledge are either unreal or 
unimportant. The computer treats reason as an instrument for achieving 
things, not for contemplating things. It narrows dramatically what we mean 
and intend by reason. But within that narrow realm, the computer can do 
extraordinary things. 
Anyone who has learned a programming language understands its logi­
cal rigor, and its artificiality. It doesn’t in the least resemble natural language. 
In fact, it is the antithesis of natural language. The latter is filled with sub­
tlety, nuance, and complex meaning determined by context and inference. 
The logical tool must exclude all of these things, as the binary logic of com­
puting is incapable of dealing with them. 
American culture preceded American computing. The philosophical 
concept of pragmatism was built around statements such as this by Charles 
Peirce, a founder of pragmatism: “In order to ascertain the meaning of an 
intellectual conception one should consider what practical consequences 
might conceivably result by necessity from the truth of that conception; and 
the sum of these consequences will constitute the entire meaning of the con­

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ception.” In other words, the significance of an idea is in its practical conse­
quences. An idea without practical consequences, it follows, lacks meaning. 
The entire notion of contemplative reason as an end in itself is excluded. 
American pragmatism was an attack on European metaphysics on the 
grounds of impracticality. American culture was obsessed with the practical 
and contemptuous of the metaphysical. The computer and computer lan­
guage are the perfect manifestations of the pragmatic notion of reason. 
Every line of code must have a practical consequence. Functionality is the 
only standard. That a line of code could be appreciated not for its use but 
for its intrinsic beauty is inconceivable. 
The idea of pragmatism, as it has evolved into languages like C++, is a 
radical simplification and contraction of the sphere of reason. Reason now 
deals only with some things, all of which are measured by their practical 
consequences. Everything that lacks practical consequence is excluded from 
the sphere of reason and sent to another, inferior sphere. In other words, 
American culture does not deal easily with the true and beautiful. It values 
getting things done and not worrying too much about why whatever thing 
you are doing is important. 
This gives American culture its central truth and its enormous drive. 
The charge against American culture is that it has elevated the practical be­
yond all other forms of truth. The charge is valid, but it also fails to appre­
ciate the power of that reduction. It is in the practical that history is made. 
If we look for the essence of American culture, it is not only in pragma­
tism as a philosophy but also in the computer as the embodiment of prag­
matism. Nothing exemplifies American culture more than the computer, 
and nothing has transformed the world faster and more thoroughly than its 
advent. The computer, far more than the car or Coca- Cola, represents the 
unique manifestation of the American concept of reason and reality. 
Computing culture is also, by definition, barbaric. The essence of bar­
barism is the reduction of culture to a simple, driving force that will tolerate 
no diversion or competition. The way the computer is designed, the manner 
in which it is programmed, and the way it has evolved represent a powerful, 
reductionist force. It constitutes not reason contemplating its complexity, 
but reason reducing itself to its simplest expression and justifying itself 
through practical achievement. 

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Pragmatism, computers, and Microsoft (or any other American corpora­
tion) are ruthlessly focused, utterly instrumental, and highly effective. The 
fragmentation of American culture is real, but it is slowly resolving itself 
into the barbarism of the computer and the instrument that ultimately uses 
and shapes the computer, the corporation. Corporations are an American 
adaptation of a European concept. In its American form it turns into a way 
of life. Corporations are as fragmented as the rest of American culture. But 
in their diversity, they express the same self- certainty as any American
ideology.