Nobody Asks What It Is For
Every knowledge civilisation in this book had an answer to what knowledge is for, and the answer decided what got funded. Ask it now and you get a proxy: growth, competitiveness, shareholder value.
By every quantitative measure, the United States is the most successful knowledge civilisation in human history.
More scientific research than any other country. More top-ranked universities. More patents, more papers, more scientists and engineers, more spent on research and development. Its technology companies are the most valuable corporations that have ever existed. If knowledge is measured by output, the contest is not close.
Now consider what a meaningful share of that capability is currently pointed at.
Somewhere there is an engineer of genuine ability, with a doctorate in a mathematical discipline, tuning a system that will determine what a billion people see when they pick up their phones. Not what they need to see. Not what would make them better informed or more capable of running their own affairs. What will hold attention for another three seconds.
That is the accumulated mathematical inheritance of a hundred civilisations, refined over twelve thousand years, deployed at planetary scale to sell things to people who do not want them.