On the eve of America’s 250th birthday, we wanted to hear from someone who has spent his career thinking about what comes next. Scott Nolan helped build propulsion systems at SpaceX, became a partner at Founders Fund, and then founded General Matter, a company working to enrich uranium in America. Today, he looks forward at what the next 250 years could bring, what they will demand of us, and why getting it right matters. This piece was originally published in Packy McCormick’s Substack, Not Boring, and we are pleased to republish it today. —The Editors
To imagine what America might look like 250 years from now, a good place to start is what life was like in the colonies that would become the United States of America 250 years ago, on July 4, 1776.
In 1776, we did not have running water, light bulbs, electricity, or gas stoves in our homes. We had no insulin, no penicillin, and no X-rays. We did not have cars, and we certainly didn’t have planes. We didn’t have trains or even horse-drawn streetcars.
In 1776, there was no anesthesia. Instead, you were held down and fully conscious during surgery. Surgeons didn’t realize that they needed to wash their hands, and the average American was most likely to die from an infectious disease. We didn’t understand blood types, and blood transfusions could not be safely performed. Infant and maternal mortality were extraordinarily high.
There was no synthetic fertilizer with which to grow food—we used animal manure—and no refrigeration to store it once harvested. Food supply was limited by season and geography, stretched with salt or smoke or ice.
There was no telegraph. Paul Revere used a horse to warn that the British were coming. Storms arrived with even less warning; there was no weather forecasting. Because there was no real-time coordination across even modest distances, there were no standardized time zones. Every town kept its own time by the sun.
