[robomartin]

Maybe I am reading this wrong. It seems to be about the US, as opposed to humanity, not having done anything important in a while:

"the fact that the US doesn’t have a manned spaceflight program is a step back. But then he said, “our generation hasn’t done anything like land someone on the Moon… we used to do big things.”"

Then he goes on to put-up Linux as an example of the US (???) having done something great? Did I read that wrong?

Linux is not a US development. It didn't even start in the US. It's the result of collaboration from nearly every corner of the world.

As for humanity not having done something great. Please. Billions of people are connected like never before via the Internet. Never in the history of mankind was the dissemination of information, knowledge and culture accessible to so many for so little. And this is just the beginning.

[Sujan]

I don't think US vs. humanity was the point of the article. The argument stays the same if you replace it with any other popular (technical) achievement in the country you are talking about ("Wirtschaftswunder" in Germany, Concorde in France, ... I don't know any others. Ignorant me.).

Still, your conclusion is absolutely right and exactly what is expressed in the article with the example of the Linux Kernel.

[lifeguard]

The article should have pointed to this rather than Linux IMO:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xerox_Parc