

Generation Y Internet users aspire to become rich and famous rather than work for their country - tim
http://www.hero.ac.uk/media_relations/18020.cfm

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shogunmike
It's a shame that so many people will not attempt to follow on with their
"dream job" goals.

At my UK University there is a strong culture of getting a good degree in a
quantitative field, perhaps doing a PhD in a similar (but still quantitative)
field and then being plucked out by a large investment bank to work as a
"quantitative analyst". The salary is good, but I'm sure the work becomes
tedious after a while. The process is almost as precise as an automobile
assembly line!

I wish the culture of entrepreneurialism was stronger than the desire to go
and price financial derivatives. After all, two/three hundred years ago nearly
everybody was an entrepreneur (farmers). How things have changed...

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pg
False premise. Do Larry & Sergey do less for the world than politicians? Does
the median politician even have a net positive effect?

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brlewis
To answer your first question, absolutely yes.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Performance_Computing_and_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Performance_Computing_and_Communication_Act_of_1991)

I don't know the answer to your second question, nor could I answer it for the
median of whatever group Larry & Sergey represent.

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pg
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_War>

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brlewis
I see the current Iraq war as evidence that more talent and smarts should be
applied to politics.

On the other hand, the comparison isn't so useful. How many young people are
choosing between politics and hacking? The two skill sets overlap only
slightly.

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byrneseyeview
This is pretty hilarious. Is "campaigning for green issues" going to do more
for green issues than starting a startup like Craigslist that saves the world
more wasted newsprint than all those activists put together?

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brlewis
It might, depending on the talent of the person running the campaign. My
talents aren't suited to being effective politically, but I wish more people
who did have such talents would use them to change things. Many of the world's
biggest and most important problems are political, not technological.

