This week we will be publishing excerpts from the Potomac Institute's latest report,
“THINK BIG: BIG Science, BIG Opportunities, and BIG Ideas.” THINK BIG argues that innovation in science and technology are the keys to American economic strength and national security. Rather than a return to the infrastructure, economy, and healthcare systems of the past, the report calls for a vision for the future.

The new Administration has identified infrastructure projects as a top priority. We must not merely rebuild or fix our current infrastructure; rather, we must reimagine the infrastructure of the future and invest in the technologies and businesses to achieve that future. The country has a unique opportunity to imagine and build a new America – to be the world leader in infrastructure innovation. Major infrastructure projects of the past, from the National Highway System to the commercial aviation sysem, have launched new industries and driven major economic development. America’s future will be a world of autonomous vehicles, universal access to information, and unlimited energy.

To reach this future, we need an innovative infrastructure investment plan. Our Future-Structure will include:

Autonomous vehicles that free humans from driving, accidents, and vastly reduce the costs of travel. Automated flying vehicles will revolutionize both commercial and personal travel.
Ultra high-speed internet access will be a universal right and will be available to the entire population just as fresh water is a national mandate, today. Entire new industries and intellectual freedoms will be born out of universal access to mankind’s knowledge base.
Super high-speed travel will usher in a new age of trade and transportation. Vast distances will be covered in minutes via ultra high-speed trains, super-sonic planes, and hyper-loop cargo systems.
Inexpensive energy will become a reality through new methods of generating and storing energy, not via a new grid but by eliminating the grid. Every home, vehicle, and electronic device will generate its own power from the vast energy provide by natural forces. Large, nationwide energy grids will become obsolete.
Education will be revolutionized when we put an iPad in the hands of every child in the country, giving them access to the world’s knowledge and customized, selfpaced learning. The next generation will know more and be more enabled than ever before.
Deep-space exploration and colonization will become possible, and eventually routine. The U.S. will become the global hub for space travel.

RECOMMENDATION

America needs an infrastructure investment plan for the future. We must leap ahead of current infrastructure systems to meet the technology-enabled demands of the next 50 to 100 years – and beyond. With a mandate to “rebuild America,” the new Administration has an opportunity to radically transform America’s infrastructure and ensure our status as the world’s economic and technology leader. Let’s embrace the future, not rebuild the past.