As a boy in the 1960’s, I was enthralled by the space race and by NASA going from its start and a series of loud failures to landing on the moon inside the decade. Not only was that an inspiration for all mankind – and the moon landing was watched by on live TV by billions of people worldwide – but the work advanced technology and brought us microchips, satellites, and medical advances.

There are two stickers on my car window, one from Wharton where I went to school and he other from the Starfleet Academy where I wish I did. I was an original Star Trek fan, watching the show each week during its original run and then almost daily in reruns. I worked at Star Trek conventions in a role that was basically like a roadie, setting up and doing whatever was needed. I got to meet the stars, the writers, and other fans like me – some a bit weirder than me, I think. What we all had in common was an optimistic view of the bright future for all humanity, when we would all get along regardless of race, religion, or nationality, aided by technology. Some of Star Trek’s vision has come to pass – we’re all carrying pocket communicators, and we have computers we can talk to. Hopefully more of the vision will come to pass as well.

When I was a boy, we worried about our environment. When I went for hikes with my boy scout troop, anywhere there was a stream with a waterfall, there was a huge pile of suds — because of phosphates in the water. When you looked at the horizon there was a dark brown haze from pollution in the air. The waterfronts smelled terrible and many rivers were devoid of life. But my second-least-favorite president, Nixon, created the Environmental Protection Agency and, years later, the waters are clean, the rivers are alive, and the brown haze is gone. We need to deal with new threats like greenhouse gases and plastics in the waterways, and I am confident that the good people of planet Earth will rise to the challenges.

I believe in good people. I’ve been lucky enough to travel the world. Everywhere the cultures are different – people listen to different music, eat different food, dress differently. But everywhere people are also the same – they love their children, they form communities to help each other, and they strive for a better life. In India, I walked past a beautiful house in Delhi with a beautifully manicured lawn, and I saw a family living in a tent on that lawn, cooking their dinner on an open fire – and they looked happy, smiling and conversing. In rural China I saw people pushing an iron plow behind an ox, hard, hard work, and they were also talking to each other and laughing.

Not everyone is good. We need police and soldiers, but most people are good. Culturally we’re making progress – not as fast as technology, of course – but when I visited England I read some history and realized that it was only a few hundred years ago that religious rivals were chasing each other around the countryside and burning each other at the stake. That hardly ever happens any more. Since I was a boy in the 60’s we have made some progress as a country in improving things for women, for gays, for people of color – slowly, but mostly moving in the right direction.

And I believe that incentives are more powerful than punishments. I learned this in a high school psychology class and see this power in my work and my family and in public life. Kurt Vonnegut wrote a very short story called Harrison Bergeron about a future where smart people had to wear headphones that played random loud noises, where graceful people had to wear weights, all with the goal of making everyone equal. That is not the vision of the future we aspire to. When I worked in the videogame industry, one of our new game producers decided to personally punish players for bad behavior by banning them, but then the producer realized that she was not going to reach her bonus goals because banning players meant that they did not spend money in the game. So she quickly shifted to developing new systems in the game that automatically prevented the bad behavior. And she later created a system where players were able to advance by mentoring other players, teaching skills to help them advance, and also fostering a community.