The 1980s were not kind to America. Sitting at the end of the longest period of economic expansion in history, what have we gained? Budget deficits are bigger. Trade deficits are bigger. What property we haven’t sold we’ve mortgaged. Our basic industries are being moved overseas at an alarming rate. We pretended for a time that junk bond traders and corporate disassemblers create wealth, but they don’t. America is turning into a service economy and telling itself that’s good. But it isn’t.

America was built on the concept of the frontier. We carved a nation out of the wilderness, using as tools enthusiasm, adolescent energy, and an unwillingness to recognize limitations. But we are running out of recognized frontiers. We are getting older and stodgier and losing our historic advantage in the process. In contrast, the PC business is its own frontier, created inside the box by inward-looking nerds who could find no acceptable challenge in the adult world. Like any other true pioneers, they don’t care about what is possible or not possible; they are dissatisfied with the present and excited about the future. They are antiestablishment and rightly see this as a prerequisite for success.