If you believe history is yet to come, the United States is still the place to be. Only in America can you find people trying to make cars fly, abolish human mortality and nurture robots with feelings. Yet America’s politics is remarkable for its resistance to new ideas. The gap between Washington’s dearth of creativity and the ferment beyond is widening. Every week, some audacious start-up aims to exploit the commercial potential of science. Many are too zany to succeed. A few will deserve to. Every week, it seems, a presidential campaign is launched. Some of the 2016 candidates are actively hostile to science. None, so far, have hinted at original ideas for fixing America’s problems. One will undeservedly succeed.
如果你相信人類還在繼續創造歷史，那麼美國仍是你應該待的地方。只有在美國，你才能發現有人正嘗試著讓汽車飛起來、讓人類長生不老、讓機器人擁有感情。不過，美國政壇對新觀念的抵制是引人注目的。在缺乏創造力的華盛頓與蓬勃發展的美國其餘地方之間，鴻溝正在擴大。每週都會有些大膽的新創公司試圖開發科技的商業潛力。很多都太過荒唐，無法成功。而一些公司則成功得實至名歸。每週似乎都有一場總統競選活動啓動。2016年大選的一些候選人對科技表現出咄咄逼人的敵意。迄今爲止，沒有哪位候選人對解決美國的種種問題有什麼原創性想法，雖然肯定還是會有一個人取得這場名不副實的勝利。