My parents came to this country to build a better life for themselves than they would have had in the Phillippines. Parent's of today may no longer have to make the same choices. India, China, Russia, and France have space programs. Prosperity seems more and more possible in many parts of the world and even their own backyard.

The American mentality of superiority will need to be tempered against this new reality. You are already seeing proposals in magazines on how to cope. That Wired article on right-brainedness is a good example.

I am the first child on my paternal and maternal family sides to be born in America. I would argue that I am also the one who has stayed closest to our culture. There is a voice inside of me that says I must think of a way to bring a little of this prosperity back to my parent's homeland and at the same time build a business model that keeps the American dream alive. Americans must find ways to be leaders.

I can see a very important use for a world full of knowledge workers. There are many information systems that have to be built elegantly and cooperatively to fight the cycles of terrorism and also corruption being purpetrated today. My thought and probably the thought of others is that the untraceability of paper money is a big hole. If every currency transaction was undeniabily traceable via biological identification to a person, we will have built a trail of bread crumbs that lead always to the murder weapon if you like. In my field of business intelligence, we are just in the infancy of finding these weaknesses in companies business process that allow money to hemorrage out.