What Is Comfort Worth?
I'm starting to feel like Eric, though for different reasons.
Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon were contracted first to observe the transit of Venus of 1761, and then to draw the boundary line between the colonies of Pennsylvania and Maryland (with a small, odd arc around Delaware). As portrayed by Thomas Pynchon, Mason and Dixon (and many of the people they encountered) came to wonder about the purposes that their work would serve. Who would be served by the cartographic and navigational advances that it would enable? The East India Company? The Freemasons? The Jesuits? What are the consequences of carving bright, clean lines across largely unsettled wilderness? What is divided? Is the scar more than figurative? What happens to that wilderness when it's mapped? What happens to the natives who live there?
Despite their growing concerns, Mason and Dixon gladly accepted these commissions because they provided steady employment (several years worth, altogether) with good pay and allowed them to do some of the most sought-after work in their respective fields (astronomy and surveying). But they were right to have been concerned. Development, with its attendant deforestation, displacement, and other ills, followed their line west. Later, and most famously, the line became the center of one of the most barbarous and infamous episodes in American history. In fact, during the many years that Pynchon spent writing his novel, the rumors surrounding it assumed that it would be about the American Civil War. Mason's and Dixon's names have become virtually synonymous with our war over slavery.
Today, we worry about Microsoft and government contractors rather than the East India Company and the Freemasons. I spent two hours yesterday afternoon in a department-wide meeting thinking about this. A guest speaker told us how we would be wielding the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and relying on our newly formed partnership with Microsoft to protect the company's assets from the pirates who are supposed to have destroyed the record industry. Leaving aside the corporate suicide that partnering with Microsoft often proves to be, I'm concerned about the societal implications of those strategies. Are exploiting clearly unconstitutional legislation and giving a vicious, anti-consumer monopolist a role in the development of media standards really such great ideas?
My concern was heightened when this guest speaker was followed by another executive who urged us to pursue software patents. Shouldn't there be a limit on the number of bad ideas that can be introduced in a single meeting? Yet I'm very happy working where I do. I'm surrounded by people that I like and respect, I'm doing work that I enjoy, and I'm well compensated--I'm personally and professionally fulfilled. How do I balance that against my small contribution to what may prove to be the future's technological version of the Mason-Dixon Line? How responsible am I for the host of complicated and even conflicting activities of a corporation? Other astronomers and surveyors would have stepped in for Mason and Dixon, so their refusing their commission wouldn't have changed history. Similarly, there are many qualified unemployed developers who would be happy to do my work, so my leaving won't prevent any of these flawed ideas from being implemented. But if I did leave, then at least their implementation could never have my name associated with it. Do most corporate employees even ponder such questions?
If Eric leaves, he'd better take me with him.
7:34:50 AM 
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