Brooks: America’s brightest minds have been abandoning technical enterprise
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Re: Brooks: America’s brightest minds have been abandoning technical enterprise
#2Upvoted because its a good starting point for discussion, but I don't know if I necessarily agree with the premise. Why should anyone go into a productive industry (by which it sounds like he means anything in which there is an end product) as we move into a service economy and production continues to be off-shored? Or maybe I'm misunderstanding/missing the point. It seems like people at all levels should go where the money and jobs are.
Re: Brooks: America’s brightest minds have been abandoning technical enterprise
#3Define "brightest minds." I don't agree with their implied definition.
Re: Brooks: America’s brightest minds have been abandoning technical enterprise
#4Pure link bait; the actual article does not say anything of the sort. The article is, in fact making the point Americans as a whole no longer "make things", and are avoiding getting their hands dirty.I'm not sure if the premise is true - it would be nice to see some hard data to back it up.
Re: Brooks: America’s brightest minds have been abandoning technical enterprise
#5The Founding Fathers were aware of this. In fact John Adams saw it as an aspiration:
"I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history and naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain."
Re: Brooks: America’s brightest minds have been abandoning technical enterprise
#6Mike Rowe spoke on this during his TED talk. http://www.ted.com/talks/mike_rowe_celebrates_dirty_jobs.htm...
Re: Brooks: America’s brightest minds have been abandoning technical enterprise
#7Hey, you can't post a link to Hacker News starting with "Brooks:" when it's not Fred Brooks. Seriously! Who is this David?
Re: Brooks: America’s brightest minds have been abandoning technical enterprise
#8The Founding Fathers were aware of this. In fact John Adams saw it as an aspiration: "I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history and naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary,…
Funny, that sounds like a recipe for the sort of social structure they were trying to break free of in colonial England. Just goes to show how 200 years of politicking and beatification has distorted the images of the founding fathers.
Re: Brooks: America’s brightest minds have been abandoning technical enterprise
#9Wait. When did making more and more stuff become a gauge of national production? Just because something is intangible doesn't mean that it isn't wealth.
Moreover, the 1800 Britain he talks about in which technology roamed free was a horrifying place to live in if you didn't belong in the right categories. It was a time when the world of Charles Dickens wasn't a fantasy.
The problem over here isn't the fact that the USA is moving from technology or innovation. It's just that the shape of it has changed. Instead of dashing off a patent for a new harvest machine. Today, people apply themselves in creating digital enterprises(not just software, this includes algorithms, hardware, AI, media, etc). Yet, the metrics that plug those super policies don't take this into account; if there was a measure of the total lines of code written in the USA then they might start taking things differently.
Re: Brooks: America’s brightest minds have been abandoning technical enterprise
#10Wait. When did making more and more stuff become a gauge of national production? Just because something is intangible doesn't mean that it isn't wealth. Moreover, the 1800 Britain he talks about in which technology roamed free was a horrifying place to live in if you didn't belong in the right categories. It was a time when the world of Charles Dickens wasn't a fantasy. The problem over here isn't the fact that the U…
No, a country without a solid manufacturing base cannot stay dominant in the world forever. Manufacturing is not low tech; it is high tech, and requires extreme amounts of innovation in technologies like robotics, chemistry, automation, etc.
You can say everything will be digital and that's fine, but until we have nano machines replicating material goods, who's going to make the things we use every day, or the things that store all those digital bits?