A recent New York Times column by Bret Stephens featured a speech he gave upon receiving an honorary doctorate from Yeshiva University. Although he told the audience he’d “like to think that [his] rabbinic forebears from Vilna are smiling on this occasion” I’m somewhat dubious that they’d be moved by an honorary degree from any institution.
The approbation of his litvishe ancestors notwithstanding it’s for the most part a fabulous talk with important points for Americans to ponder at this moment of our history. And although he was talking about America and the larger world when refracted through a Jewish lens many of the issues he raised might just as well be directed at us.
Stephens imagines what someone living a hundred years from now and looking back at the 21st century might name as the innovations that defined it in economic terms. He suggests three candidates as of this moment.
The first is fracking which has taken us in the course of a decade from predictions of an end to the world’s oil supply and of America being a marginal energy producer to an “era of energy superabundance in which America is again the global leader.” The second is that of mobile apps which are now “a ubiquitous feature of our lives… and will revolutionize everything from the way we get pizzas to medical diagnoses.” And lastly there is the new frontier of gene therapies which have “opened the prospect that many cancers may be manageable or curable after all.”
