America is the height of its power.
Innovation and invention will define a new era of prosperity
And technological wonder.
One invention will change the world
Along with the biggest communications revolution ever seen.
And while old threats fade,
New challenges will test America as never before.
We are pioneers and trailblazers.
We fight for freedom.
We transform our dreams into the truth,
Our struggles will become a nation.
The 1970s,
America is locked in a global standoff with another superpower:
The Soviet Union.
It's the Cold War
Communism and capitalism clash in an ideological battle for supremacy
For many, it's an era of fear and uncertainty.
Nuclear nightmares.
By the end of the Cold War
The rival countries will amass enough explosive firepower.
Over a million Hiroshimas.
But the Cold War has another battlefield.
The 'Space Race'.
And when America claimed the prize by putting a man on the moon
A technology that will define the era comes of age
Television
185 million Americans are united in front of their TV sets.
Looking back at those images now
We marveled at the clarity of the picture
This was live from the moon, after all.
It was the height of technology and marveled at it
In 1940, there are just a few thousand TV sets in the whole country
By 1970, there are over 60 million.
TV will play a defining role in shaping a new era.
America has always tried to adopt new technologies
Television, as we know it today,
I mean, it was considered, think about this crazy idea.
We can send moving images to
Any place in the United States
But America's been built on technological innovation and invention
From the steam boats and six-guns
To automobiles for everyone.
It's conquered a continent with technology.
But throughout the nation's history,
It is communications technology that played a defining role.
1865.
The telegraph helps President Abraham Lincoln win the war for the North.
He virtually seizes and can command every battle.
1945. David Sarnoff,
Eisenhower's most senior communications expert,
Helped develop television for America.
By 1950, Sarnoff creates one of the biggest TV broadcast networks in the world.
TV may be a new form of entertainment,
But it's also the most powerful communications device in existence.
Sarnoff recognized that there was gonna be awesome power.
And that, with that awesome power was gonna come awesome responsibility.
By 1970, the American public is watching more television
Than any nation on earth.
Over 5 hours a day for every man, woman and child
There are more TV news programs than any country in the world.
Over 70% of the adult population
Watch the television news every evening.
And when pictures of the moon landings are broadcast live,
It isn't just technological success,
It is a symbolic victory in the Cold War.
But there's a real war closer to American lives.
Vietnam.
A bitter conflict in Southeast Asia.
America fears communism will sweep the region
And wants to stop its influence.
But the U.S. Military and all its technology
Comes up hard against determined guerrilla movements.
And the war is being fought
By hundreds of thousands of drafted young Americans.
We asked so much of our 18-year-old
To go over to foreign land, the jungle no less
And fight a guerrillas who are home on their turf,
And don't like at all the invading army.
The generation that is fighting the Vietnam War are the baby boomers
The biggest ever American generation.
Over 50 million new Americans born in 15 postwar years.
This huge generation are unlike any Americans who have come before,
And their influence and attitude toward society
Are destined to change the face of America.
The 1960 were inevitable.
The greatest generation came home
With fixed idea of what life should be about
And they were so busy putting their own lives back together again
In a traditional fashion
That they weren't paying attention to the changing sensibilities of their children.
America in a way reinvents itself every 10 or 15 years.
And...
And that reinvention is always feared by the generation that came before
August 1969, upstate New York.
Woodstock.
A weekend concert for over100,000 ticket-holders,
Was overrun by nearly half million baby boomers.
Over a million more tried to get in.
It is the world's biggest ever music festival
And become the boomer's coming out party,
A signal to America of the generational change taking place.
Coming from the society culture
That was fairly buttoned up and prim and proper
To one that suddenly was...
What we had Woodstock, we had hippiedom. We had free love.
Baby boomers had a huge tremendous impact
On how we view the world and how we view society.
But the baby boomers aren't just rebelling against their parents' value.
People begin to attempt to affect
From the streets, the highest levels of foreign policy.
The baby boomers want an end to the Vietnam War,
And they take their protest to the street.
The willingness to stand up for what you believe in,
In mass demonstrations of revolt, that's very American.
In the Vietnam War
People were unwilling to die, for something they didn't believe in.
Protest is deep in the American character.
The pilgrims against the old world and religious persecution.
The colonies against the British and their taxes.
Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman against slavery.
1970.
There have been thousands of anti-Vietnam war protests.
Kent State University, Ohio.
The National Guard are ordered in to control
500 protesting students.
Television is here watching.
Four students are shot dead.
I think that that drove it home for a lot of Americans,
To see on their television,
And to have this mass of people who felt so passionately about it
The images.
You know, America is a very visual country.
And because Vietnam is the first televised war,
Battles and casualty lists are daily news events.
Television brings the reality of the war into the nation's living room
Just as 100 years ago Civil War photography
Revealed the true horror of war,
Now TV news images begin to turn the nation
We had already lost over 50,000 Soldiers, many more wounded than that.
I think most Americans realized Vietnam was a hopeless cause.
More bombs than were dropped in the whole World War II.
Hundreds of billions of dollars.
But what the most Americans remember
Are the pictures they see on their TV sets.
Watching people in Saigon clinging to helicopters
As we left in disgrace.
This is profoundly un-American notion.
1975. The Vietnam War is finally over.
In many ways it really was the anti-war movement on the ground
That shaped our story of Vietnam and to some degree
The actual experience of the war.
For many of the baby boomers,
The protest and rebellion has a wider aim:
To create a completely new way of life.
You could rebel against your parents and rebel against society
While creating your own utopia,
This is a very 60s ideal.
Creating a land where you can live your dreams is part of the American character.
The reason that the pilgrims came to America.
While Mormon pioneers headed west.
The baby boomers aren't looking for a new land.
They want to change American society, make a fairer place
As the 60s turn into the 70s,
Black activism, Native American land rights,
Gay rights, ecology and feminism
Burst on the agenda and the streets.
The baby boom generation shaped America
The movement for equality for women in the workplace
Certainly came out of that
There is a tiny moment in American history
Gave a lot of confidence to American women.
Freedom is freedom.
All the men and women are created equal.
I had no prior knowledge of the Watergate break-in,
I neither took part in nor knew about the subsequent cover-up activities.
1974. President Nixon is implicated in the break in
And the bugging of his political rivals headquarters
He' accused of covering up the crime.
Congress starts an impeachment process
Which transmits live on television.
Holders of the highest offices in the land
Are subjected to grilling watched by millions
The Nixon administration hits the TV age and loses,
There had been scandals previously in American history,
But none that unfolded on television, with the immediacy of the Watergate Scandal.
What was revealed by the Watergate Scandal
Was a level of internal corruption, a level of deception
And a real violation of American democracy
That even critics of the American government up to that point
Simply hadn't imagined.
It was the last nail in the coffin you might say of,
For many, many people of Americans confidence in their own society.
I shall resign the presidency effective at noon tomorrow.
The only president ever to resign the office.
His speech was watched live by 85% of all American households.
Freedom of the press and TV showing their true power.
I mean, the power of Watergate is saying
You need a free press. Because there are some things
That you will not learn if you do not have a free press.
While television proves the downfall of one President, throws America into crisis,
Another will learn to use this new technology
To rebuild the American confidence and usher in a new era.
As the 70s turn into the 80s America feels bruised.
The Middle East oil crisis.
American hostages in Iran.
Surveys show only 22% of Americans trust the government
Unemployment and inflation
Are both the highest levels since the Great Depression.
America has endured economic downtime before.
In the 1930s, Roosevelt tries to bring America out of its Great Depression
With government spending in new initiatives.
But he also harnesses the power of a new media, radio,
To speak directly to the nation.
Franklin Roosevelt had this truly mysterious capacity
To speak through the radio in way
That compelled not just the attention but affection of
Millions upon millions of his countrymen.
Now, half a century later, a new President uses television
In his attempt to restore the nation's confidence.
How can we not believe in the greatness of America
How can we not do what is right and needed
To preserve this last best hope of man on earth
His nickname was "the great communicator."
He was able to articulate in a way
That many people would accept as being innately American.
Americans want to believe that their country was good and strong,
And Reagan spoke to them in a voice that said "Yes, we are."
My fellow citizens, I would like to speak to you tonight about our future,
About a great historic effort to give the words 'Freedom', 'Fairness' and 'Hope'
New meaning and power for every man and woman in America.
Specifically I want to talk about taxes.
The 1980s appear to be a new era of American financial prosperity.
Low interest rates and the easy credit flows lead a business boom.
Over the course of decade, trading on Wall Street markets breaks records,
The Dow Jones Index rises more than 200%.
By the 1980s, 100,000 Americans become millionaires every year.
There have been boom times before.
The oil rush leads to cheap gasoline and cars for the masses.
And cheap steel leads to a construction boom, build new cities.
Now, in 1980s America, cheap credit creates a boom in consumers.
The credit card is the symbol of the decade.
Invented in 1958, once reserved for the wealthy,
Now it's democratized.
By 1989, more Americans have credit cards
Than vote in elections.
The 80's see cardholders increase their debt by a factor of five.
By the end of the decade, Americans are spending
Nearly a quarter of a trillion dollars on their credit cards every year.
During the 80's, the number of shopping malls
Surpasses the number of high schools.
There's a 78% increase in fast-food stores.
Spending on restaurant food more than doubles
To over $250 billion in decade.
During that decade we probably become
More materialistic than we ever had before.
Consumption was off the charts.
But what consumers really want is technology,
The latest home appliances, the latest entertainment technology.
There are barely 2 million VCRs in 1980
Over 63 million by 1990
From a few thousand cell phones,
By the end of the decade there are over 5 million.
Your first pocket knife, your first bicycle, your first car,
Today, you know, your first cell phone, your first laptop,
All these are badges of gaining control over our world,
Of having, being able to live life better
Because you have a better tool, and the skill to use it.
That's something that's deeply appealing to the American psyche.
But many of these consumer technology advances are developed
Directly from the biggest spending spree of all:
The space race.
The Cold War with the Soviet Union is still going strong
Laying out across the globe and the final frontier.
By the end of the Cold War, 7 trillion dollars has been spent
Keeping America ahead of her communist rival.
The result, one of the most sophisticated and daring space craft ever built:
The space shuttle.
The space shuttle was a beautiful idea,
It was an elegant craft that would be more efficient, more economical
Because it could take off and land and be reusable.
The shuttle adds to Americans consumer boom.
One of its primary functions is to launch communications satellites,
Helping expand America's ever growing appetite
For entertainment, communications, telephones and GPS.
And the technology that goes into the shuttle also comes back to earth.
Cell phones, water purification,
Airplane landing gear, firefighting equipment,
Cordless power tools, medical tech, and even ski wear.
All benefited from the shuttle program.
For many, the shuttle is symbolic of American story.
It's like one of those self-fulfilling prophecies.
You know, let's work for a better future. We'll get the better future.
Talk about the frontier spirit,
It's not a question of succeeding or failure.
It's just continuous growth, and which is really inspirational.
But the nation's faith in technology is about to receive a blow.
Confirm maneuver Challenger.
The shuttle is a new era for America.
Space-age technology is powering the country forward.
The nation's been built on innovation.
New technology creates progress, wealth, expansion.
As axes improve, forests can be cleared at a greater rate
A new military technology wins wars,
Makes nations.
Throughout our history, every one of these technologies
Has been transformative in a way that has changed economies,
It's changed lives, it's changed settlement patterns.
It takes entrepreneurs like Andrew Carnegie.
He takes new steel production techniques
And supersizes them to produce vast quantities of the raw materials
That built the great American cities.
And engineering geniuses like Mulholland,
His 223 mile LA Aqueduct allows a city to grow from the desert.
But progress often carries a human cost.
1825.
Building the Erie Canal to connect the Great Lakes to New York City
Claims nearly 1,000 lives.
1865.
The Transcontinental Railroad, almost 2,000 lives.
At the turn of the century, two out of every five men
Die or disabled building the skyscrapers of America's new cities.
3
2
1
And lift off.
Now the space shuttle is the pinnacle of a new era of American technology.
1986 is to be the fleet's busiest year.
The crew of the Challenger shuttle is chosen
To represent cross-section of modern America.
Different races, backgrounds, professions
"And the idea always was "Can we begin to open this up somehow"
"To more people than just highly trained astronauts."
Confirm maneuver Challenger.
The dream of space flight is extending to everyday Americans.
The shuttle is seen as an easy safe route to the final frontier.
"Go into throttle up."
"Copy, throttle up"
But on January 28th, 1986,
Just 73 seconds after it takes off,
Challenger explodes, live on national television.
"You could see that it took the audience a few seconds to realize"
"What they were seeing, because it was so hard to interpret."
Seven lives lost.
"All of a sudden it was like "How could that have happened?""
"I mean, NASA, the United States, we're like the best in the world at this."
"What happened?"
"Challenger, go with throttle up."
"Copy, throttle up."
"It was like a blow to the gut of the nation."
"And we do fail at a times."
"But the greatest test comes from what happens"
"After you realize and accept the fact that you fail."
"Do you go crawl into a corner and never do anything again,"
"Or do you get back up, dust yourself off and move forward?"
Just three years after Challenger, the Cold War is over.
So is the Space Race.
While one generation has dreamed their future in outer space,
The next will create theirs on a new frontier:
Cyberspace.
Individual, entrepreneurial ideas, run wild.
And that really is the American spirit.
And it's a way to figure out how to fully utilize something that's out there.
In 1873, on his kitchen table,
An Illinois farmer called Joseph Glidden
Invent something that changes the face of America: Barbed wire.
Within 10 years, over half a million miles of barbed wire
Parcels up a billion acres of the Midwest
And turns open prairie into the bread-basket of America.
1879.
Thomas Edison invents the electric light bulb.
It will generate a further 1000 patents.
But he also creates the first commercial power grid
Within 2 years, he sets up 5000 power plants.
In five more, he creates a further
127,000. electric light and power across the nation.
We are a nation of entrepreneurs.
We have this incredible entrepreneurial spirit.
But one 19th century American invention introduces an idea
That will shape our 21st century world.
In 1850, the looms in cotton mills are automated with paper punch cards.
The holes in the cards instruct the loom to use different colored threads,
Switching one color on, one color off.
It's binary code
And the key to the future computer revolution
At first computers don't seem like a revolution.
In the 1940s, a single computer with the power of a basic PC today
Could be the size or a Greyhound bus,
And needs the same amount of power as a small a town.
Many people believe that only a few computers will ever be sold.
But then they start to reveal their power.
In the 60's, computers are used by universities
To achieve previously unthinkable calculations.
And from 1970s onwards,
Corporations use them to replace thousands of manual clerks.
Cold War super spending helps fund computer development,
Helping companies like IBM to become massive corporations.
But it's not corporations or the government
That create the next computer revolution.
1976.
A garage in Northern California.
Two computer hobbyists, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak
Create the world's first practical personal computer.
The original kind of pioneers of the digital revolution.
In a sense they were building computers for themselves,
For ordinary people like them.
They weren't particularly wealthy.
They weren't working for large organizations.
They just were tinkers.
Soon competitors bring out their own machines.
When IBM launched their PC, it ups the game.
Computers are changing fast.
Along came the mouse and along came pictures on the screen.
That kind of competition is really where innovation comes from.
The Apple II of 1980 has more computing power
Than was used in the entire Apollo moon landing program.
Personal computers become more powerful, more popular.
There are just 300,000 PCs in 1980.
By 1990, there are over 67 million.
That year, Microsoft sales alone topped one billion dollar.
But the true power of computers is yet to be realized.
Only when they start to talk to each other,
Will the computing revolution be complete?
In 1969, a communication revolution begins.
Four computers start talking to each other down a telephone line.
It's the birth of the Internet.
In a sense, it's our kind of DNA as a country
To trying jump on whatever new form of communication technology is there,
Because it was essential for our ancestors in building this large nation.
By the mid-19th century, the continent's vast distances shrink,
The horse and wagon give way to the railroad.
Along with the railroad spreads the telegraph, the Internet of its era.
Messages that once took days or even months to reach their destinations,
Now travel down the wire at the tap of a button.
One young railway clerk from the Midwest
Has a vision of how the telegraph and railroads
Could revolutionize the way we do business.
By 1900, the Sears catalog
Transforms how Americans buy and sell.
A century later,
The Internet takes this revolution one step further.
By 2005, almost 200 million homes
Have computers and Internet access,
With over 5 billion dollars of goods sold on-line in 2009.
You realize that just the power of this connectivity was unstoppable,
Overwhelming, incredible and scary at times.
From the first e-mail sent in 1969,
By 2009, 90 trillion e-mails are sent worldwide,
247 billion every day.
This spirit of liberty, freedom of openness,
Has been a really core part of the Internet
And this sort of basic idea that every one
Should be able to participate equally in this new medium.
It's a very American spirit of an idea.
This idea that everybody should have access to knowledge.
And in 1990s California,
The Internet boom sparks a second 'gold rush'.
Gold Rush mentality still existed over 100 years later
When Silicon Valley got started.
And the secret of Silicon Valley was the people were willing to take huge risks.
In 10 years 30,000 new high tech companies launch.
Silicon Valley creates nearly a million new jobs in the 1990s.
Venture capitalists inject over 121 billion dollars
Into high-tech companies in 1998.
But not every dotcom entrepreneur makes a fortune.
In the Silicon Valley culture, it's perfectly fine
If you have a brilliant idea and you try it and it doesn't work out,
People accept that, "hey, you know
They don't all work."
But if you did a good job, you will probably get another chance.
In March, 2000, the dotcom bubble bursts.
The world is transformed.
While people didn't make as much money as they thought they were going to make,
Everybody got online. And the country got wired embraced this new technology
Much faster than it would have had there not been big boom.
So just as the gold rush kind of invented California,
I think the Internet boom days didn't make any fortune
But they did wire the whole country in a really transformative way.
But as the information super-highway comes of age,
America wakes up to a new and terrifying friend.
It came quite literally and metaphorically out of the clear blue sky.
Nobody saw this coming.
It was the blackest day in American history.
No doubt about it.
Someone said, "General, you need to turn on the television." I did that
And I watched along with the world
As the second jet hit the second tower.
On the morning of the September 11th, 2001, two passenger plains
Hijacked by terrorists linked to Al-Qaeda
Crash into the World Trade Center towers in New York.
When it first happened and I first realized how bad it was,
It took a while to understand how bad it was,
And I realized it was the worst attack in our history.
I remember thinking "Well, the world is gonna change.
"I'm not sure,
how
But the world is gonna change."
34 minutes later, a third plane, American Airlines Flight 77,
Hits the Pentagon.
At 10:03, fourth plane,
Believed to be heading for the Capital or the White House
Crashes near Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
After passengers on board take on the hijackers.
We were stunned, we were frozen.
And I know in our small community
That same feeling of helplessness and hopelessness
Was replicated out across the United States, coast to coast.
We watched while the fires developed.
It was a horrible event.
But almost no one, certainly no one around me
Had any idea that the integrity of the entire towers was at risk.
At 10:28, the World Trade Center's North Tower also falls.
And there was a line of ambulances up the West Side Highway,
It just went on forever.
And they never called ambulances and nobody ever came
And after a while we began to realize like
"Oh, my God, there aren't survivors."
The 9/11 attacks claim almost 3,000 lives
In New York, Pennsylvania and Washington DC.
People would walk up 6th Avenue, completely shell-shocked,
And they would be covered in white dust
Because the towers had just fallen around them.
People call 9/11 our generation's Pearl Harbor
It was an attack by enemy that none really saw coming.
It was devastating.
This was seen almost as a declaration of war by Al-Qaeda
And transnational extremists on the American homeland.
But the worst attack on American soil serves to galvanize the nation.
I believe the terrorists attacked us for two reasons:
To kill a lot of people and kill our spirit.
And they did kill a lot of people, but they didn't kill our spirit.
People displayed very brave attitude in the way they dealt with it,
And I think the terrorists never expected that.
Belief in freedom and the courage that can give you overcame
The ability of the terrorists to try destroy the spirit of the country.
It's really weird being in the city after 9/11
Because the city was so quiet
People get on the subway, no one would speak.
People were very polite to each other.
You know, just everybody would move in.
People would give up their seat with one talk.
It was just weird.
It was almost like ...
They realized how fragile everybody was.
Despite what happened and the horror and the loss
Kind of amazing that Americans could rebound
And you know, they came back to New York,
America came back to New York, and helped New York,
Spend money in New York and visited New York.
We were able to do something so quickly
So expeditiously in terms of going back
To order after the travesty of World Trade Center when it came tumbling down.
To have done that so quickly, it's amazing.
You have the worst attack in the history of the country
In the small tip of the island and ten years later
You go back and it's filled with people.
More people have moved there than ever in history of that neighborhood.
Certainly it didn't have that many families
Now the playground is right around the spot the planes hit,
Are filled with kids.
And so there's kind of this sense of like "Yes, try it,
Fine, you can fly planes into our buildings, but, you know,
We're going to go back, we are gonna building a new life for ourselves."
America rebuilds and looks to the future.
400 years ago, adventurers crossed an ocean
And began an experiment that would become the United States.
They saved up every penny they had,
So they could take a treacherous ship ride to the United States
And then come to a country where was nothing here.
They had to make everything themselves, build everything themselves.
America was born out of adversity.
It's...
It's like in our DNA.
At the start of a new millennium, the American experiment is still under way.
This is an unfinished country.
We're not completed and settled down.
There're still opening new space, new territory which they move
And we're still incorporating new people
Who continuously transform the very DNA of our society?
The last decade of the 20th century saw nearly 10 million new Americans
Welcomed into the county. More than in any other decade of the country's history.
I think the unsung heroes, began with the first people
With the courage to get on those very small wooden ships in 1607
And have continued up to today.
I always tell people, you just walk down the cab rank at National Airport
And list where people come from,
You realize that the spirit of immigration and the spirit of better future
Hasn't disappeared at all.
In 2007, one in eight Americans was born abroad.
My mother's Cuban and my dad is Australian,
My mother is black, my father's white.
But America is this melting pot.
You know, I'm a black Latino with freckles.
And that's kind of America.
We're this melting pot people and we always have been.
We've been place that people are dissipate to get to
Because they know once there, their story can be written.
It can be anything.
Each society in the past created tremendous innovations in civilizations.
And of a sudden we have them all here.
It's not just one philosophy. It's many, many philosophies
Which makes for a very creative country.
In the past 20 years,
2/3 of new immigrants have come from Latin America and Asia.
I think this theory that you can be anything that you want in America
Is not a theory. It's a truth.
It is a basic truth that plays itself out in every immigrant story.
It's really what America has always been about
Coming from someplace else. Coming to a place
Where you can rise up with your own sweat, and your own hard work
And achieve something better than what you might have had elsewhere.
So for me the immigration experiment in America will never end
Because really that's what defines us as a nation.
I think that Americans are
A collection of incredible soul and beings
Who believe we are all in this together.
This is a country where you can take chances.
You're allowed to try anything to achieve success
And failure is always there.
And in order to try things and have failure there, you have to be brave.
There's a large can-do attitude in the United States.
I think America's a land of opportunity again because, there were no set rules.
We sort of invented it as we went along.
It's this belief that wherever you are in every moment of history
Whatever your circumstances, that radical progress is possible.
I believe the United States has and hopefully will continue to have
Some of the great thinkers in terms of entrepreneurship.
We are a nation of open-mindedness.
I think we love new things.
I think we love to try new things.
We've sacrificed our blood and treasure
For just about every great thing in America
Whether it's been on an overseas battlefield
Or something as seemingly mundane as the Hoover Dam.
Over the centuries there has been a lot of adversity,
And we have usually triumphed.
We're a country that is always prepared to fight back.
It's just part of the American character.
This country reacts very well under pressure.
It goes through these pressurized times and then comes out stronger than before.
So I suppose you could say the most defining characteristic is our dynamism,
And equally important we are an optimistic people.
We are a people who believe the future is our friend.
Everybody was created equal.
It's in the Declaration of Independence. All men are created equal
That really gives voice to the whole American experience.
We still have racial difficulties, we still have disadvantaged people,
But unique thing about America and its diversity and its people,
Is that we are always moving forward.
And we're always dealing with problems, not ignoring them.
Questioning your country and constantly going back
And examining the beauty of it and the flaws,
I think that makes a patriotic American.
That's real American character in my mind.
I mean, the frontiers that we've conquered is kind of amazing.
In a relatively short period of time
America's helped to transform the world.
From a few fragile footholds...
In just 400 years
America has grown into the most powerful nation on Earth.
Born from the enterprising spirit, and piety of the first settlers,
Forged by revolutionary passion and high ideals,
Driven by a thirst for innovation and technological change,
A nation drawn from across the world.