July 16, 2007
The New Value of Humans
A quick commercial: there are several great stories in this month's American Magazine. Jim Glassman took over the American Experience -- which I liked -- and made it even better. It is an awesome, pretty, and inexpensive magazine. Their new website gives you most of the book if you don't want to subscribe, but I'd advise ponying up the fifteen bucks. It is printed on nice paper and features great design.
One that caught my eye was Revenge of the Frosh-Seeking Robots. The intro might be apocryphal, but it is important all the same:
Rich Karlgaard, the technology entrepreneur who is publisher of Forbes, tells the story of a trip he took with Microsoft’s Bill Gates in the early 1990s. On the flight, he asked Gates, “Who is your chief competitor?”“Goldman Sachs” was Gates’s surprising reply.
The article details the competition between Wall Street and Silicon Valley for top talent, and tells about an inexpensive robot targeted at budding young engineers to get them hooked on the joys of programming. As they watch their robot dance to their instructions, they'll lose interest in studying economics and a big money investment banking career.
Leaving aside the fact that I am a programmer who wishes he were an economist, I like this story for underscoring what I believe to be an unprecedented recognition of the value of humans. People whine about our "disposable culture" because we replace, instead of repair, electronics. I try to convince them that it is good to recognize that a day of a smart person's time is worth more than a television.
To some extent, the increase in lawsuits is part of this pattern as well. It's 65% greedy lawyers, but it would not be possible without the recognition of the incredible value of a healthy human life. To risk a few of those on an asphalt playground was acceptable when I was in grade school but it is not today. Padded playgrounds and bicycle helmets cause eye-rolling among my peers. But it represents a realization of the monetary value of an American child.
I am not saying that children are more loved. My parents loved me as they put me untethered in the back of a station wagon and drove to California. What was missing was the high financial value. Readers of this blog will no doubt cry nanny-statism and they are correct. But it could not proceed without this higher value placed on life.