Carrying the Lantern

Star Wars and America's Decline.

As John Markoff notes in an e-mail, Neal Stephenson has an excellent op-ed piece in today's New York Times -- but the last two paragraphs should have come first. Here they are:

Scientists and technologists have the same uneasy status in our society as the Jedi in the Galactic Republic. They are scorned by the cultural left and the cultural right, and young people avoid science and math classes in hordes. The tedious particulars of keeping ourselves alive, comfortable and free are being taken offline to countries where people are happy to sweat the details, as long as we have some foreign exchange left to send their way. Nothing is more seductive than to think that we, like the Jedi, could be masters of the most advanced technologies while living simple lives: to have a geek standard of living and spend our copious leisure time vegging out.

If the "Star Wars" movies are remembered a century from now, it'll be because they are such exact parables for this state of affairs. Young people in other countries will watch them in classrooms as an answer to the question: Whatever became of that big rich country that used to buy the stuff we make? The answer: It went the way of the old Republic.

Don't worry about it. Just go out and bid on that house you wish you could afford.

[Dan Gillmor's blog]

Henri Bergson (French Philosopher, 1927 Nobel Prize in Literature, 1859-1941)