Drunk on technology

I keep hearing that the US is falling behind in science and technology. So what? What are the opportunity costs of gains in science? Less literature and music? Less idle time for the young? Less time spent home with family? Less values? Less joy? In the extreme, we will have a generation that can create the wonders of the future, but have no moral bearings as to if and how they should. It seems that often it is not more technology that is needed, but rather less. The problems of systemic obesity in the US will not be cured through the further implementation of food science, but through its significantly reduced application. The world will not be safer if we continue to master the splitting of the atom, but rather will only be secure if we remove the Damoclean nuclear threat by obliterating the technology used to achieve the feat in the first place. The advances in risk management technologies have not insulated our investments from wild swings, but rather have acted antipodal to this desire, creating unprecedented volatility and uncertainty: created systemic risk. Everywhere I look technology seems to be at the root of our problems; the very same technologies developed a generation before with the intent of fixing the problem leftover from the previous technologies, and so on and so forth. We have become drunk on technology and the misbegotten hangover is just starting to commence.

I was so much older then, I am younger than that now...

I have become convinced that the American soul is incredibly undernourished and see this as one of the most pressing policy concerns of the coming decades, if not the most pressing policy concern. I do not think hundreds of channels of TV or the proliferation of i-pods is going to do it. And no number of youtube videos or blogs can make up the deficit. We need a system over-hall. Jesus, I already sound like an old man. Maybe, but I see no other truth.

Custudy Hearings 2.0

Statement of Purpose: (DRAFT)

I want to put together something that attempts to capture the zeitgeist of this generation. The technology, the digital voyeurism, the guilt, the nihilism, the private life and the shit that fills it, the rejection of the American dream: we do not want to produce more, to have more, but rather want only to loll around and love and be loved more. We dare to be ironic but are too apathetic to realize that we already are. We are a sham generation. We will be shorter, fatter, dumber, and poorer than those who came before, and will achieve this through increased hours, heightened use of technology, increased efficiency, and all the culminations of modern health and science. We pushed into office a president of change, and seemingly did it with ever giving a thought to what that meant. We no longer have the bible, but believe rather in the infallible invisible hand. The market it supreme. Hail the market. We just need to fix the market. The market did not fail us, we failed the market. This is the now and this where I want to intercede.