Arach Tchoupani

Listen up, President’s Advisory Council: You don't go making big statements about presidential openness and press conference behavior without checking in with Martha Joynt Kumar of Towson University, who has been keeping track of that bit of institutional history more carefully than anyone else. You don't make judgments off the top of your head.  You collect the data. You think it through. You look at the big picture and the specific facts. You consult the scholars who know.

Interesting concept, no?

While we're at it.

Found on that DJ YO-C mix I linked to earlier

So tonight I read an email from a good friend with amusement:

The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy has asked for some ideas on how the President and the Federal Government can increase high-tech entrepreneurship in America, and I thought that you might have some good ideas in this area.

They are looking for both goals and tactics. The tactics could involve legislation, Federal spending, public-private partnerships, political will, etc. Given your standing in the community, I am sure that you have some thoughts on goals. I am looking to pull some ideas together for them in the next few days.

My response was basically the title of this post – we don’t want their help, because they tend to turn everything they touch into toxic waste anyway. Just leave Silicon Valley alone please. Please.

I’m seeing way too many friends spending time in Washington posing for photos with Obama and Hillary Clinton lately. God knows what they’re actually telling these politicians while they’re busy playing Mr. Important Person. But I doubt it’s what they should be saying – leave us alone, stop pissing on our flowerbed.

If the government wants to help innovation in this country they should get busy with infrastructure. Lay fiber to every home and business in the U.S. Actually start building some of these high speed train networks to make travel easier. Get computers into the hands of every child in the country as soon as they are physically able to press buttons. Heck, put a woman on the moon. I don’t know if that last one will do much, but at least they’ll be busy not screwing up Silicon Valley while they’re at it.

I would have said let in any highly educated person in the world that wants to live here, but I know that isn’t going to happen. We will continue to shun the next generation of brilliant foreign entrepreneurs because of some absurd fear that they’re going to take away our jobs. In a few years those entrepreneurs will no longer want to live here anyway.

I think Michael just gave his ideas right there.

Implying that the President is at fault for the less awesome provisions of Senator Dodd's bill is a bit of a stretch. And ignoring the roots of the Valley as a research and production arm for the US Military is a bit rich.

But in general I tend to agree. Don't get in the way.

Over its five seasons, "The Wire" shows how money and markets connect and intertwine white and black, rich and poor, criminal and police in a grand web that none of them truly comprehends—a product of human action but not of human design. It's the invisible hand that's calling the shots, as Mr. Simon subtly reminds us in the conclusion to the third season, when Detective McNulty wondrously pulls a book from the shelf of murdered drug dealer Stringer Bell, and the camera focuses in on the title: "The Wealth of Nations" by Adam Smith.

Smith's metaphor of the invisible hand, like Mr. Simon's invocation of Zeus, tells us that to understand the world we need to look beyond the actions of individuals to see the larger forces at work. But Zeus is an arbitrary and capricious god whose lightning bolts fall out of the sky without reason or direction. Smith's "invisible hand," however, is that of a kinder god, a god that cares not one whit for individuals but nevertheless guides self-interest toward the social good, progress, and economic growth. So Mr. Simon understands that the Baltimore dockworkers lost their jobs because of the relentless change that capitalism brings and not through any fault of their own. But Adam Smith sees what Mr. Simon does not, namely that it was capitalism that brought the Baltimore stevedores their high wages in the first place and it is the relentless change of capitalism that slowly raises wages throughout the world.

I encourage you to read the article over at WSJ.

I saw the demo of g-speak a couple of years ago, but it's different to see it live and to hear the thought that goes into it.

This is amazing work. I love it. Can't wait to get my hands on something like this.