The Rocket Girls and the Wage Gap

It’s a lovely photograph. Twenty seven women in two rows, lined up outdoors at Caltech in 1953. Young and old, saucy and stern, black and white, a wonderful panorama of mid-twentieth century American womanhood. Recently memorialized by Nathalia Holt in her book, “Rise of the Rocket Girls,” these women are called out as true heroes.

They were computers, at a time that when that was still most generally a human profession, not a machine. They were an island of women in a sea of male engineers and researchers and administrators.

And in their computational labors at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, eventually to become a unit of NASA, they helped shepherd us into the space age. Calculating trajectories and orbits and escape velocities and safe reentry vectors, they were the unheralded heroes who made Explorer, Voyager, the Apollo moon landings, and the Viking Mars expedition resounding successes.

And they were most certainly paid less than their male colleagues.

Which is inequitable, unfair, and just plain not right, penalizing both the women and their families and society in general.

In 1960, the average compensation for women was 60% of that of men. That stark difference has slowly been equalized but seems to have stalled just shy of 80% since 2001. While outright discrimination and exploitation play a part, there may be something more to it.

As long ago as 2012, the New York Times cited studies identifying a significant wage penalty in developed world economies for working mothers. Terming it the “Mommy Penalty,” the Times cautioned us that the true impact could be even worse:

“And remember, those wage gaps are for full-time workers only. The gap widens if you compare all working mothers, since women are much more likely than men to work part time.”

The Times reporting, as well as other studies, suggest that women earn less than men because they tend to be the ones who bear children, and that might impact the time and/or energy invested in work outside the home.

In our current political climate, with our obsessive drive for equality of outcomes, let’s consider some prescriptive policy relief. To assure equality of results, let’s impose some legislative conditions on men.

Let’s start with the amount of time expended in employment. To create a level playing field, it must be equalized. So when a woman bears a child and begins to dial back her time commitment to work, her male partner should be required to do likewise. The man must take off the same time for doctor appointments, the delivery, the recovery, early child rearing. And as the child grows and the woman leaves early to take the child to athletic events or to attend a school play, her mate must do the same. When the wife declines a business trip due to family obligations, so, too, must her husband.

If the woman declines a promotion because she wants to maintain her family work/life balance, so must the guy she married.

As you might sense, if this were the case, that stubborn wage gap might finally again begin to dwindle.

But this is only the beginning. Since we are in a regulatory mood, let’s not waste the moment.

Imagine the relative number of female vs. male workers in various professions. Roofers, sheetrock hangers, firefighters, police, lumberjacks. Let us legislate that the ratio must be 50/50 men and women, even if that requires firing some men to reach that ratio. Now compare the wage gap again.

But we aren’t done yet. How many manicurists do we have in town vs. bank officers, and how many are men and how many women? We may need to fire some male bank officers and make them into manicurists in order to reach our equality goal. This is command economy intervention at such a height that only a true socialist could comprehend and appreciate.

But the wage gap, stubborn as it is, would finally be beaten into submission. Only at the cost of our overall economy, and the financial health of our families, but darn it, equality would be worth it.

All this a bit tongue in cheek but based on economic reality. A more productive set of policies might be to provide increased funding for women's education and skills development, expand subsidized public daycare and pre-school, and encourage aggressive EEOC actions to root out bias. But even this will not eliminate the gap.

Perhaps one day technology will rescue us, where fetuses are gestated in artificial wombs and infants cared for by robotic nannies. But, unfortunately, until that day, some degree of wage inequality may persist.

The Rocket Girls, with their impeccable logic and mad mathematical skills, would understand this well.

You didn't build that

In a recent NPR broadcast on the wonders of the human brain, we learned how researchers have been able to identify particular regions used for specific tasks and emotions. Such as the finding that people who are happy tend to have a larger precuneus, a structure also thought responsible for consciousness.

These are indeed miraculous times, that we can inspect our own brain and determine what makes us self-aware, what makes us feel happy, which regions might cause insomnia, and how we learn language. One scholar exclaimed of the mystery and power of a brain that is able to unlock its own secrets and understand itself.

After all, our brain is but a computer, composed of about 86 billion neurons. The African elephant has three times as many, but we rarely see scholarly articles published by elephants.

The secret, of course, is that we have evolved the ability to communicate, to both exchange and record complex thoughts. And that over time we have developed tools and technologies allowing us to delve into our physical world, to manipulate and understand its workings, including that of our own brain.

When a single researcher is bent on the task of fathoming the human brain, it is not only her brain focused on the task. She is benefiting from billions of fellow human brains that have, over many years, built a corpus of thought and research and tools and recorded knowledge. This is our unique human power.

Robinson Crusoe, stranded alone on his desert island, would have little chance of understanding the operation of his own brain.

In any human endeavor, it is the multiplication effect that makes our race so successful. Libraries full of research, universities training new generations, clever tools and machines and sensors probing our world, computers and networks facilitating communication, we amplify the power of our own measly 86 billion neurons.

In spite of the critical importance of this social infrastructure, individual brilliance is still crucial, cultivated, and revered. Albert Einstein, whose theory of ripples in the fabric of space-time was recently validated, stood on the shoulders of Copernicus and Planck and Maxwell. It’s as if this fabric of human knowledge and abilities forms a trampoline on which a brilliant, young, aspiring thinker might ascend to a new insight, a breakthrough, a flash of genius.

In this we observe the interaction and mutual interdependence of society and the individual.

“You didn’t build that” is a meme that has pervaded our recent politics. It is meant to diminish the significance, and hence the deserved remuneration, of individual contribution. Liberals use it as a justification for increasing the tax on success. Conservatives interpret it as an attack on the value of entrepreneurs and the free market.

In truth, both have a point. Tom Brady would not be fabulously wealthy without the social infrastructure that offers him a field of play. But we (at least those who are fans) would be the poorer for not seeing his brilliance on the field. Tom Brady is wealthy because we value the entertainment he provides.

Examples abound. Steve Jobs (rest his soul), was enormously wealthy but brought us our ubiquitous, dearly loved iPhones. Larry Page and Sergey Brin, each multi-billionaires, founded Google, an indispensable tool to billions of people every day. Mark Zuckerberg, another multi-billionaire, brought us the spectacle of silly cat videos and embarrassing spring break photos on our Facebook feeds. None of these folks “built that.” But “that” wouldn’t have been built, in this way, at this time, without them.

More quotidian examples surround us. For government employee, teacher, police, and fireman pension funds, those are invested in corporate America. The success of those companies, and the CEOs who lead them, is paramount to your retirement. Yet somehow it is fashionable to decry and punish that success.

Just as in science, society has evolved a commercial infrastructure upon which our entrepreneurs and business leaders create and implement their individual visions. It is true that trucking companies couldn’t be successful without public roads. But without trucking companies, the value of public roads would be diminished. And it’s also true that we must all contribute to the public fisc.

But we must never demean nor punish individual achievement, whether an Einstein, Zuckerberg, or Brady. Individuals need society, and the inverse is blindingly obvious. The trampoline is useless without the jumper.

You haven't seen anything yet - Augmented Reality (AR) is on the way

Programming the ENIAC. US Army.

Computers have been around for a very long time. ENIAC, the first general purpose electronic computer, was constructed over seventy years ago. And we have always struggled with how to communicate with them.

Your smartphone screen is littered with colorful graphic images representing applications (apps). The screen is touch sensitive, and you call up an app by simply touching an icon. Once in the app (for instance,  Facebook), you can view your feed or notifications by touching the appropriate widgets. Photos can be zoomed by a reverse pinch on the screen. When you want to type, a virtual keyboard appears as if by magic. If you’d like, you can specify an Italian or German keyboard. All this by touching and swiping and pinching on the smooth glass, illuminated with virtual tokens.

In 1946, that would have been beyond the imagination of all but the most brilliant visionaries. The ENIAC was difficult to interact with, requiring thousands of cables and switches to be plugged and set. Setting up even a simple request was a lengthy process and could take days or weeks.

And it took a long time for things to slowly, gradually improve.

For many years we typed our commands into the computer and saw the results printed back to us, first on paper and later on green, glimmering cathode ray tube (CRT) displays. There were no pictures, graphics, or diagrams, only letters and numbers. (Although truly talented and bored programmers could print out convincingly recognizable images of Snoopy or Marilyn Monroe using only row after row of carefully selected characters – at least when viewed from a distance).

Then along came Apple Computer, who freed us from the tyranny of the keyboard by presenting us with the mouse and a graphic (as opposed to character) display. This was the graphical user interface (GUI) which presented a virtual desktop, containing figurative icons representing stuff you might want to do – email, word processing, drawing, and so on. By pointing and clicking with the mouse, you could fire up the email application without typing an arcane command. The human-machine interface was beginning to grow up.

But the early Macintosh had its problems. The power of personal computers in those days was very limited, and the GUI interface demanded a lot of processor and memory performance. As a result, the early GUI machines tended to be sluggish. This problem was eventually solved as manufacturers delivered increasingly more capable components. By the mid-1990s, the GUI was king.

It is hard to comprehend how things have progressed. In the 1990s, huge, multi-ton supercomputers calculated weather models and were able to predict, possibly, whether tomorrow called for sunglasses or a raincoat. Now, the smartphone in your pocket has far more power than those goliaths.

Which presents us with an opportunity.

The computer in your pocket has a million times the processing power of the old mainframes. This is mind boggling. And it gets even better – our smartphone computers are doubling in power every couple of years. What to do with all of this power?

There is a new human-machine interface on the horizon – augmented reality (AR).  Impossible even a few years ago, AR demands huge amounts of processing power. But its time has come.

According to Christopher Mims, technology writer for the Wall Street Journal, AR is “the story of the most exciting technology you’re ever likely to encounter, which could transform how we interact with computers in the 21st century.”

The key idea is that computer displays will become uncoupled from the physical desktop monitor or smartphone screen that you are used to.

Mims expounds further. “To understand AR, imagine a display that sits, not on your desk or in your hand, but in front of your eyes. Today, these displays are unwieldy, ranging from bulkier versions of safety glasses to something akin to a bicycle helmet. But many technologists believe that within five years, these displays will be able to project a virtual screen on every surface.”

Envision looking at your hand and seeing your smartphone screen – but it’s not really there, just a representation of it projected to your eyes. And as Mims says, “Imagine looking at a wall and, with a gesture, transforming it into a giant display—your entire workspace, with you wherever you go. Imagine a world without screens, save the one we bring with us.”

Mind-boggling is not enough to describe this next stage of the human-machine interface. As the song goes, “the future’s so bright, I gotta wear shades.”

Occupy Brain Cells

Legislating in the streets

It is a complex world in which we live. We’re sure we know what we want, our grand vision. Social activists protest, lobby, and press. The President wields his pen and his phone. Legislators legislate. Bureaucrats regulate. The politically correct cudgel us into their approved mindsets. Humiliation is used as a weapon to ensure lock-step thinking. Yes, we are a happy people, all happy together, thinking our approved, happy thoughts.

But sometimes this man-made nirvana falls short. Here are a few examples.

The Cecil Effect

You may recall Walter Palmer, the dentist who shot Cecil the lion. The outcry was enormous, Palmer thoroughly villainized, and trophy hunting put into the shame locker. All as it should be, you might observe.

Except that it’s not.

On February 23, the Los Angeles Daily News published a piece entitled “Why the Cecil effect is bad news.” Apparently trophy hunting has dropped sharply in Africa. The Bubye Valley Conservancy, a huge wildlife reserve in Zimbabwe, is reporting a sharp overpopulation of lions.

According to the article, “Bubye Valley Conservancy has more than 500 lions, and they may have to cull 200 in order to reach a level that is sustainable.” (To those not in the know, a cull is a selective slaughter).

The other animals in the conservancy are suffering as a result. Hungry lions are “eating up way too many antelope, giraffe, cheetah, leopards and wild dogs.”

It is also reported that villagers who had relied on the hunters’ trade are sinking deeper into poverty.

This is a perfect example of an unintended consequence. Activists and lobbyists and shamers were quick to jump on Dr. Palmer in particular and trophy hunting in general with no thought of the predictable outcome.

That’s a good start… here’s another one closer to home.

Legalized Marijuana and Heroin Deaths

There has been a sea change in how marijuana is viewed in our nation.  According to Governing Magazine, “Twenty-three states and the District of Columbia currently have laws legalizing marijuana in some form.”

One of those states is Massachusetts, where medical marijuana has been legalized and personal use decriminalized. This is the right thing to do from a classic libertarian point of view. But perhaps not without consequences.

While the pot smokers are happy, there has been a disturbing, and very deadly, increase in deaths from opioid overdoses. (This includes heroin and painkillers).

For Massachusetts, according to Masslive, “the number of confirmed cases of unintentional opioid overdose deaths for 2014 was 1,089 – a 63 percent increase from the 668 deaths in 2012, and a 20 percent increase over the 911 cases in 2013.”

It’s not just a local issue. The Boston Globe tells us that “nationally, 125 people a day die from overdosing on heroin and painkillers.” That’s over 45,000 deaths per year, about the same as automobile deaths and gun homicides combined. Where is this plague coming from?

The Washington Post has a clue. In a January 11^th article, they tell us “Mexican traffickers are sending a flood of cheap heroin and methamphetamine across the U.S. border, the latest drug seizure statistics show, in a new sign that America’s marijuana decriminalization trend is upending the North American narcotics trade.”

We shouldn’t have been surprised by the outcome of legalizing weed. It was perfectly predictable, and could have been accompanied by mitigating actions with only a little foresight. (For instance, the Swiss drug policy model, which offers free, safe opioid substitutes to addicts).

Alright, time for just one more.

Shootings double in Chicago

The Chicago Tribune reported just a few weeks ago that the homicide rate in Chicago has doubled compared to a year ago.

In Chicago, “The city has recorded at least 95 homicides since the first of the year, compared to 47 last year, according to data kept by the Tribune. The city has also more than doubled the amount of people shot - about 420 this year compared to 193 last year.”

What is happening?

One theory is this – police are pulling back. They have reportedly seized far fewer illegal guns so far this year as compared to last. “Evidence of a pullback starts with an 80 percent decrease in the number of street stops that the officers have made since the first of the year.”

Again, it is not entirely a surprise that if we vilify our police, they may feel less anxious to put their lives and careers on the line for us.

We have now seen several instances of social or public policy which seem to have backfired. What is the common theme here? One is the preeminence of emotion over logic. Public policy should be carefully based on reason and fact, not on feelings and sentiments. We are far too often tempted by emotion – but should always pause and calculate.

Better public policy is possible. Perhaps, one day, when the computers are in charge…