Miss Management: When geeks rule the earth—and the economy

May 26, 2010 | Galynn Nordstrom

Despite my journalism degree, I'm a science geek and a lifetime science fiction fan, and probably always will be. When I see japes replacing the ubiquitous "you are here" signs with "You MAY be here—Werner Heisenberg," I chuckle softly to myself and am gently cheered all day. Statements such as "There are 10 types of people in this world—those who understand binary, and those who don't" can keep me amused for weeks, much to the dismay of those around me. (The world would be a far happier and more progressive place if reality TV and politics were replaced by well-thought-out wine cellars and libraries. And you know who you are.)

Given those predilections, it's only natural that I've lately been thinking of our country's, and our planet's, long-term economic and environmental circumstances in terms of Isaac Asimov's "psychohistory," a fictional science in his "Foundation" universe that combined history, psychology and mathematical statistics to predict the behavior of very large populations of people. Asimov's fictional character Hari Seldon established three rules for psychohistory:

1. The population under scrutiny must be unaware of the existence of psychohistory;
2. The time periods dealt with are generational, not annual;
3. The population must be in the billions to have statistical probability for psychohistorical calculations.

There are, certainly, people and organizations who are pursuing research that bears a distinct resemblance to, if it is not actually based on, psychohistory. In a recent PBS interview, Nobel-winning economist Paul Krugman commented: "I don't know how many of your viewers read science fiction, but there's a very old series by Isaac Asimov-the Foundation novels-in which the social scientists who understand the true dynamics save civilization. That's what I wanted to be; it doesn't exist, but economics is as close as you can get, so as a teenager I really got into it."

Isaac Asimov also wrote a series of stories and novels about robots, initially building around another set of three rules (and possible ways to circumvent them):

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey any orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

I haven't yet worked out exactly how to work psychohistory into our current world crises, and whether this global recession would constitute a Seldon Crisis. I'm working on it. But as far as the three rules of robotics go, I just thought of a set of rules which might apply to individual businesses and short periods of time.

First Law: A business may not injure a society, or, through inaction, allow a society to come to harm.

Second Law: A business must obey any orders given to it by its government, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

Third Law: a business must protect its own existence, as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

The permutations here are also virtually endless, and I'm going to belabor them considerably in future blogs. I may find a way to cover reality TV and politics, too.

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