Date: 11/01/07

Summary: Newt uses examples from the early 20th century to show how individuals have come up with the technologies we now consider mainstream. Without their efforts, perhaps many of the innovations we now enjoy would never have come into being.

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“Look, if it was 1903, and we were having this conversation, today, and we were talking about transportation patterns over the next quarter century, and the argument was basically over a) how much horse manure we’re getting in New York streets, b) the amount of time it takes for a train to get from here to California, and I was sitting here saying, “There’s this whacked out guy in Detroit who thinks he can build a mass-produced car, and there’s these two nut cake bicycle mechanics at Kitty Hawk, who by the way two days from today will fly for the first time.” Now every economist would have said to me, “Those don’t count. We have to have a rational projection. So you can’t have cars and you can’t have airplanes.” So I’m going to start and say, “You’re exactly right.” If you assume a static world, and you assume no technological breakthroughs, and you assume incentives don’t work, this is really hard to solve.”