At around 5/9/06 10:12 pm, Carrol Cox wrote:
> ravi wrote:
>>> I must say though that behind the few amazing breakthroughs in science
>> and technology, the Labs also housed/funded/protected a large
>> non-productive population.
>
> Substitute "X" for "the Labs" and the proposition will remain true for
> all values of X.
>
That may or may not be the case, but I think the Labs formalised that
sort of thing. At other workplaces, the level of contribution or effort
varied between individuals but almost all did something that was
productive. In fact, I tend to not believe the Atlas Shrugged theory of
progress (the gifted x <= 5% pulling along the rest of the lazy,
unintelligent masses), and my experiences have tended to justify that
belief. This is true even of my experience at the Labs: laypeople know a
few names but (as is sort of well-known) hardly the entire effort behind
a discovery or invention. What was different about the Labs was that it
was an environment almost tailor-made for non-productive activities --
people publishing papers (without even the small responsibility of
teaching etc., in academia).
On reading my post, I realize that it's a bit misleading. I was (as is I
hope obvious) not around at the Labs during the time of the creation of
Unix or when Tom London (whom I worked *for* among other people) worked
on it. My tenure at the labs was during the 90s.
--ravi
--
Support something better than yourself: ;-)
PeTA: http://www.peta.org/
GreenPeace: http://www.greenpeace.org/
If you have nothing better to do: http://platosbeard.org/
