In today’s THAT WAS THE WEEK tech newsletter, Keith Teare asks what “civilization” is good for. Triggered by David Brooks’ “We Can Achieve Great Things” NYTimes piece, Keith’s editorial this week focuses on how we can “earn” the future through constant innovation. The problem - as everyone from Keith Teare to David Brooks to KeenOnAmerica guest Yoni Appelbaum all acknowledge - is that America has become stuck in camps, routines and ideologies. So how to unstick America? How to reestablish belief once again in the future?

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Here are the 5 Keen On America take-aways from my conversation this week with Keith Teare:

* Civilization and Technology: Keith argues that civilization is deeply interconnected with technological progress, suggesting that innovation has historically enabled human advancement and that government's role should naturally diminish as abundance increases.

* David Brooks' Essay on Progress: We discuss Brooks' New York Times piece "We Can Achieve Great Things," which examines how progressives have built systems that inadvertently render government ineffective, and the need for a compelling narrative about the desired future.

* The "Stuck" Society: We explore Yoni Appelbaum's argument that America has become immobile, with people no longer moving for opportunity and becoming "stuck" in their locations, which contradicts the traditional American dream.

* AI Democratizing Coding: We discuss how AI tools are allowing non-coders to build applications, with Keith sharing his personal experience creating an app without knowing the programming language Swift, suggesting this might enable individuals to build significant businesses.

* AI Competition Landscape: Our conversation covers recent AI developments, including Perplexity's move to create an AI web browser, OpenAI's GPT-4.5 Orion launch (which Keith acknowledges has been rushed to market), and the intensifying competition between companies like Anthropic, OpenAI, and others in the rapidly evolving AI space.

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