A Partial Response

A long time ago, href="http://scienceblogs.com/grrlscientist/about.php">Grrlscientist
href="http://girlscientist.blogspot.com/2005/06/le-scholar-oblige-another-book-meme.html">tagged
me with a meme.  So long ago, in fact, that
ScienceBlogs did not even exist.  So it may as well have been
in a galaxy far, far, away.  



It was a book meme.  There were questions like "how many books
do you own."  I finished counting several weeks later, and
started to write it out.  Then the file was lost in an
unfortunate incident that we do not need to discuss here.   I
never got back to reconstructing it.  



Reading the Seed article, href="http://www.seedmagazine.com/news/2006/06/a_silver_lining_to_our_science.php?page=2">A
Silver Lining To Our Science Struggles, got me to
thinking about one part of what I had written.  One of the
questions asked to name four books that had been influential to me.
 



Curiously, I realized that one of them was href="http://www.wwnorton.com/catalog/spring97/why.htm">Why
the Allies Won, by Richard Overy.
 Curious, because in general I am not a history buff, and I
don't particularly care for war, either.  

Overy's central thesis is that an Allied victory, in World War II, was
not at all guaranteed.  He makes a good case for the argument,
that any one of a number of rather small factors could have tipped the
balance.



Getting back to the Seed article, David Epstein (the author) takes
issue with the notion that America's global superiority in science and
technology is in jeopardy.  He makes some good points.
 I would like to point out, though, that there is absolutely
nothing that guarantees continued superiority.  



One of the points he makes is this:

Thomas Friedman, New York Times columnist and author
of The World is Flat, a 500-page treatise on globalization, wrote that
there's "something about [America's] free society and free market that
still attracts people like no other."

That is true, of course.  But it is ever so
fragile.  It is sort of like the strength of the American
dollar.  It is based upon a global popularity contest, nothing
more.



One of the implications of free and ready access to information is that
it is becoming progressively harder to keep secrets.  Anyone
who can get to an on-line computer can publish information to
the 'net, and anyone with similar access can read it.  
Maintaining a lead in a popularity contest is made much more difficult
in such an environment.  



Imagine how the outcome of a show such as American Idol might
be changed, if all the contestants had research staffs and a small army
of people spying on other contestants, taking digital photos and videos
on the sly, and posting all that muck on the 'net.  It would
be just like our next Presidential election will be.



It is no surprise that the US government is taking steps to control the
flow of information.  They know how fragile the system is.