The scientist of science-fiction and horror films, whose experimentation leads to disastrously unforeseen consequences, is a more anxious representation of the awareness that the most future-oriented nation in the World shows a deep incapacity to plan ahead. We are, as a people, perturbed by our inability to anticipate the consequences of our acts, but we still wait optimistically for some magic telegram, informing us that the tangled skein of misery and self-deception into which we have women ourselves has vanished in the night. Within the walls of a social establishment, formal rules about important status line in industry can be drawn at the point where employees can be explicitly enjoined to “get to work.” (An extreme is seen, apparently, in some Alabama work camps, where “indifference to work” may be punished by the lash or by “cutting up.”) It is well known that “make-work” occurs in these circumstances; namely, an outward show of task activity, an affection of occasioned main involvement performed at an affectation of occasioned main involvement performed at moments of inspection. This activity can be purely situational since it often accomplishes nothing but show. The problem of maintaining an appropriate main involvement has special bearing on street behavior. The act of purposefully going about one’s business, of looking “…as though [one] is coming from some place or going to some place,” involves a dominating objective that leaves the actual focus of attention free for other things; one’s destination, and therefore one’s dominant involvement, lie outside the situation. #RandolphHarris 1 of 24

Where the subordinate main involvements that can result become intense, as in a heated quarrel or a warm caress, the individual may be seen by others as delinquent in the regard that he owns the gathering at large. In addition to giving the impression of having been diverted from what ought to be the business in mind, individuals may give the impression of having no business at al to get to. Being present in a public place without an orientation to apparent goals outside the situation is sometimes called lolling, when position is fixed, and loitering, when some movement is entailed. Either can be deemed sufficiently improper to merit legal action. On many of our city streets, especially at certain hours, the police will question anyone who appear to be doing nothing and ask him to “move alone.” (In London, a recent court ruling established that an individual has a right to walk on the street but no legal right merely to stand on it.) In Chicago, an individual in the uniform of a less affluent person can loll on “the stem,” but once off this preserve he is required to look as if he were intent on getting to some business destination. Similarly, some mental patients owe their commitment to the fact that the police found them wandering on the streets at off hours without any apparent destination or purpose in mind. An illustration of these street regulations is found in Samuel Beckett’s description of the plight of his fictional disabled hero, Molloy, who tries to manage his bicycle, his crutches, and this tiredness all at the same time. #RandolphHarris 2 of 24

“Thus we cleared these difficult straits, my bicycle and I, together. However, a little further on I heard myself hailed. I raised my head and saw a policeman. Elliptically speaking, for it was only later, by way of induction, or deduction, I forget which, that I knew what it was. What are you doing there? he said? I’m used to that question, I understood it immediately. Resting, I said. Resting, he said. Resting, I said. Will you answer my question? he cried. So it always is when I am reduced to confabulation, I honestly believe I have answered the question I am asked and in reality I do nothing of the kind. I will not reconstruct the conversation in all its meanderings. It ended in my understanding that my way of resting, my attitude when at rest, aside my bicycle, my arms on the handle bars, my head on my arms, was a violation of I do not know what, public order, public decency.” [Molloy is then taken to jail, question, and released.] What is certain is this, that I never rested in that way again, my feet obscenely resting on the Earth, my arms on the handlebars, and on my arms my heard, rocking and abandoned. It is indeed a deplorable sight, a deplorable example, for the people, who so need to be encouraged, in their bitter toil, and to have before their eyes manifestations of strength only, of courage and of joy, without which they might collapse, at the end of the day, and roll on the ground. #RandolphHarris 3 of 24

Lolling and loitering are often, but not always, prohibited. In societies in which café life is institutionalized, much permitted lolling seems to exist. Even in our own society, some toleration is given to “lolling groups,” in which participants open themselves up to any passing momentary focus of attention and decline to maintain a running conversation unless disposed to do so. These clusters of persons passing the time of day may be found on slum corners, outside small-town stores and barber shops, on the streets during clement whether in some metropolitan wholesale clothing districts, and, paradoxically, on the courthouse lawns of some small towns. The rule against “having no purpose,” or being disengaged, is evident in the exploitation of untaxing involvements to rationalize or mask desired lolling—a way of covering one’s physical presence in a situation with a veneer of acceptable visible activity. Thus, when individuals want a “break” in their work routine, they may remove themselves to a place where it is acceptable to some and there some in a pointed fashion. Certain minimal “recreational” activities are also used as covers for disengagement, as in the case of “fishing” off river banks where it is guaranteed that no fish will disturb one’s reverie, or “getting a tan” on the beach—activity that shields reverie or sleep, although, typically with the less affluent lolling, a special uniform may have to be worn, which proclaims and institutionalizes this relative inactivity. #RandolphHarris 4 of 24

As might be expected, when the context firmly provides a dominant involvement that is outside the situation, as when riding in a train or airplane, then gazing out the window, or reverie, or sleeping may be quite permissible. In short, the more the setting guarantees that the participant has not withdrawn from what he ought to be involved in, the more liberty it seems he will have to manifest what would otherwise be considered withdrawal in the situation. Here is useful to reintroduce a consideration of subordinate involvements such as reading newspapers and looking in the shop windows. Because these involvements in our society represent legitimate momentary diversions from the legitimate object of going about one’s business, they tend to be employed as covers when one’s objective is not legitimate, as the arts of “tailing” suspects have made famous. When Sam Spade affects to be examining a suit in a store window, his deeper purpose is not to try to suggest that he is interested in suits but that he has the same set of purposes as a person in a public street who diverts himself for a moment in going about his business to gaze in a window. Similarly, as an former person without a home tells us, when one’s appearance and real purpose put one outside of the current behavior setting, then a pointedly correct subordinate involvement is essential to convince others that one’s dominant involvement is of the kind that is associated with these subordinate involvements. #RandolphHarris 5 of 24

One idiosyncrasy that he [a friend] has discovered but cannot account for is the attitude of station policemen toward book readers. After seven-thirty in the evening, in order to read a book in Grand Central or Penn Station, a person either has to wear horn-rimmed glasses or look exceptionally prosperous. Anyone else is apt to come under surveillance. On the other hand, newspaper readers never seem to attract attention and even the seediest vagrant can sit in Grand Central all night without being molested if he continues to read a paper. Some time ago, I attended a bridge party, I do not play bride—and there was a woman there who did not play bridge either. She had discovered that I had once been Lowell Thomas’ manager before he went on the radio and that I had traveled in Europe a great deal while helping him prepare the illustrated travel talks he was then delivering. So she said: “Oh, Mr. Winchester, I do want you to tell me about all the wonderful places you have visited and the sights you have seen.” As we sat down on the sofa, she remarked that she and her husband had recently returned from a trip to Japan. “Japan!” I exclaimed. “How interesting! I have always wanted to see Japan, but I never got there except for a twenty-four-hour stay once in Tokyo. Tell me, did you visit Tokyo Tower? Yes? How fortunate. I envy you. Do tell me about Japan.” That kept her talking for thirty minutes. She never asked me where I had been or what I had seen. She did not want to hear me talk about my travels. All she wanted was an interested listener, so she could expand her ego and tell about where she had been. #RandolphHarris 6 of 24

Was she unusual? No. Many people are like that. For example, I met a distinguished botanists at a dinner party given by a New York book publisher. I had never talked with a botanist before, and I found him fascinating. I literally sat on the edge of my chair and listened while he spoke of exotic plants and experiments in developing new form of plant life and indoor gardens (and even told me astonishing facts about the humble potato). I had a small indoor garden of my own—and he was good enough to tell me how to solve some of my problems. As I said, we were at a dinner party. There must have been two dozen other guests, but I violated all the cannons of courtesy, ignored everyone ese, and talked for hours to the botanist. Midnight came. I said good night to everyone and departed. The botanist then turned to our host and paid me several flattering compliments. I was “most stimulating.” I was this and I was that, and he ended by saying I was a “most interesting conversationalist.” An interesting conversationalist? Why, I had said hardly anything at all. I could not have said anything if I had wanted to without changing the subject, for I did not know any more about botany than I knew about the anatomy of a penguin. However, I had done this: I had listened intently. I had listened because I was genuinely interested. And he felt it. Naturally that pleased him. That kind of listening is one of the highest compliments we can pay anyone. Few human beings are proof against the implied flattery of rapt attention. I was hearty in my approbation and lavish in my praise. #RandolphHarris 7 of 24

I told him that I had been immensely entertained and instructed—and I had. I told him I wished I had his knowledge—and I did. I told him that I should love to wander the fields with him—and I have. I told him I must see him again—and I did. And so I had him thinking of me as a good conversationalist when, in reality, I had been merely a good listener and had encouraged him to talk. What is the secret, the mystery, of a successful business interview? There is no mystery about successful business intercourse…Exclusive attention to the person who is speaking to you is very important. Nothing else is so flattering as that. Listening is not a science, but a form of activity. Face your interlocutor and hear with your mind and attentively consider what you have to say whole you say it. At the end of an interview the person who has talked will feel they have explained themselves well. Self-evident, is it not? You do not have to study for four years in Harvard to discover that. Yet I know and you know department store owners who will rent expensive space, buy their goods economically, dress their windows appealingly, spend thousands of dollars in advertising and then hire clerks who have not the same sense to be good listeners—clerks who interrupt customers, contradict them, irritate them, and all but drive them from the store. Even the most violent critic will frequently soften and be subdued in the presence of a patient, sympathetic listener—a listener who will be silent while the irate fault-finder dilates like a king cobra and spews the poison out of one’s system. #RandolphHarris 8 of 24

For instance: The New York Telephone Company discovered a few years ago that it had to deal with one of the most vicious customers who ever cursed a customer service representative. And he did curse. He raved. He threatened to tear the phone out by its roots. He refused to pay certain charges that he declared were false. He wrote letters to the newspapers. He filed innumerable complaints with the Public Service Commission, and he started several suits against the telephone company. At last, one of the company’s most skillful “troubleshooters” was sent to interview this stormy petrel. This “troubleshooter” listened and let the cantankerous customer enjoy himself pouring out his tirade. The telephone representative listened and said “yes” and sympathized with his grievance. “He raved on and I listened for nearly three hours,” the “troubleshooter” said as he related his experiences before one of the author’s classes. “Then I went back and listened some more. I interviewed him four times, and before the fourth visit was over I had become a charter member of an organization he was starting. He called it the ‘Telephone Subscribers’ Protective Association.’ I am still a member of this organization, and, so far as I know, I am the only member in the World today besides Mr. Ed. I listened and sympathized with him on every point that he had made during these interviews. He had never had a telephone representative talk with him that way before, and he became almost friendly. #RandolphHarris 9 of 24

“The point on which I went to see him was not even mentioned on the first visit, nor was it mentioned on the second or third, but upon the fourth interview, I closed the case completely, he paid all his bills in full, and for the first time in the history of his difficulties with the telephone company he voluntarily withdrew his complaints from the Public Service Commission.” Doubtless Mr. Ed had considered himself a holy crusader, defending the public rights against callous exploitation. However, in reality, what he had really wanted was a feeling of importance. He got this feeling of importance at first by kicking and complaining. However, as soon as he got his feeling of importance from a representative of the company, his imagined grievances vanished into thin air. To become successful, it often pays to talk to successful people and find out about their childhood and how they got their start in business and became a success. When you have successful people that want to listen to you, talk to you, and give you guidance these experiences will imbue you with confidence that is invaluable. These people will fire in an individual a vision and ambition that shapes one’s life. And all this is made possible by taking the time to care about others. However, some people are so concerned about what they are going to say next that they do not keep their ears open. Very important people have told me that they prefer good listeners to good talkers, but the ability to listen seems rarer than almost any other good trait. #RandolphHarris 10 of 24

Since our contacts with others are increasingly competitive, unanticipated, and abrasive, we seek still more apartness and accelerate the trend. When many people call the doctor, all they want is a good audience. They often feel better after they have a conversation. So many people merely want a friendly, sympathetic listener to whom one can unburden oneself. That is what we all want when we are in trouble. That is frequently all the irritated customer wants, and this dissatisfied employee or the hurt friend. If you want to know how to make people shun you and laugh at you behind your back and even despise you, here is the recipe: Never listen to anyone for long. Talk incessantly about yourself. If you have an idea while the other person is talking, do not wait for him or her to finish: bust right in and interrupt in the middle of a sentence. Conversely, if you aspire to be a good conversationalist, be an attentive listener. To be interesting, be interested. Ask questions that other persons will enjoy answering. Encourage them to talk about themselves and their accomplishments. Remember that the people you are talking to are a hundred times more interested in themselves and their wants and problems than they are in you and your problems. A person’s toothache means more to that person than a famine in California which kills a million people. A boil on one’s neck interests one more than forty Earthquakes in Texas. Think of that next time you start a conversation. The desire to be somehow special inaugurates an even more competitive quest.  Be a good listener. Encourage others to talk about themselves. #RandolphHarris 11 of 24

The core of the old culture is scarcity. Everything in it rests upon the assumption that the World does not contain the wherewithal to satisfy the needs of its human inhabitants. A semi-permeable barrier is anything that prevents some kinds of interactions while permitting others. Often people can make an existing barrier or boundary selectively permeable. In fact, many walks have gates and guards who exercise selective control on comings and goings. Nations have immigration rules enforced at their boarders; religions permit conversions on specific conditions; there are systems of e-mail filters that let in some messages and screen out the rest. Indeed, the rise of the Internet has powerfully directed our attention to the design of semi-permeable barriers. There are such low costs to the movement of information in this medium that there is little indirect filtration of the kind accomplished by costs of movement in physical space. To move a letter to your house promptly, someone must pay first-class postage, which discouraged first-class broadcasting on trivial communications. Even at low rates, postage charges on advertisers serve to filter out many messages, most of them unwanted. However, as we all now realize, plummeting costs of all forms of electronic transmission are contributing to monumental volumes of low-value or even harmful communications. The result is a boom in semi-permeable systems such as sophisticated network firewalls, V-chips for televisions, and the PICS metadata standard that facilitates advance and blocking in selection of Web sites. #RandolphHarris 12 of 24

As Information Revolution reduces the cost of moving information in “cyberspace,” we lose a fundamental property of networks embedded in physical space. Those who are “near” you are not necessarily “near” each other. The classical character of conventional social structures is undone, as the mix of connections for each agent contains more relations that lead outside local, mutually connected clusters. This increase of out-group connections changes the spread of rumor and disease and reduces the correlation among the knowledge bases of interacting groups of agents. It also means that many who are near you, or be liked by you. The demand for selective permeability is great when an overwhelming number of interactions that consume time and resources are possible, and the other agents are not well known to you or to those you know well. The introduction of sophisticated filters to achieve semi-permeable barriers in cyberspace is just the most recent episode in a long history of devices that add greater selectivity to simple barriers, whether those barriers are physical or conceptual. Our choice of the label “semi-permeable” reflects some of the earliest inventions of the biological realm, such as members that are able to admit some substances while screening out others. Not only do they function to increase proximity by establishing high concentrations of key resources inside the membrane; in some cases they also affect activation patterns by altering their selectivity as concentrations go above or below key thresholds. #RandolphHarris 13 of 24

Beyond such fundamental biological cases, there are many examples of semi-permeability in the social World. To the guards and immigration officers mentioned earlier we can add the secretaries who control access to their boss’s calendar; the boards that test, accept, and expel members of professions such as law and dentistry; the automatic gates that lock entry to a parking lot when it is estimated to be full; and the priests who enforce rules of religious “immigration.” In all these cases a barrier is conditionally opened or closed to an agent wishing to move through it. It is no accident that many of the examples involve delegating a person to make those choices. The selectivity is important and not easy to automate well—as anyone knows who has looked wistfully at an empty parking place lying just beyond a blocking automatic gate that “thinks” the lot is full. The great advantage of semi-permeable barriers is the increased precision of blocking and permitting movement in physical or social spaces. Crude physical restrictions may amount to “no one may pass.” Conceptual barriers can be more selective, providing more complex rules that allow desirable types to pass. Semi-permeable barriers can allow passage where admission should be governed by momentary conditions, such as parking lot fullness, or in situations where rules cannot cover well all the circumstances that may arise—as may happen at the door of a highly popular discotheque. The great disadvantage is the possible mismatch between the riles or criteria governing the selective admission and the long-term welfare of the system behind the barrier. #RandolphHarris 14 of 24

A religious community may have too few children born or surviving, but the priests may stick to strenuous tests for converts, driving membership below viable levels. The automatic gate may have an error-prone method of estimating the occupancy of the parking lot. Cell walls may admit virus particles with a shape that resembles a needed protein. Both conceptual and semi-permeable barriers may admit the wrong agents or block the right ones. It is also interesting that some viruses are more infections right after a person catches them, than we they have had time to ravage the body. And vaccines and pills do not permit all persons from passing viruses on, they may not work on some people. It is easy to produce examples of the many ways in which Americans attempt to minimize, circumvent, or deny the interdependence upon which all human societies are based. Such large unnoticed changes will also force us to rethink the very functions of the firm. If much of the value added derives from relationships in the mosaic system, then the value a firm produces and its own value comes, in part, from its continually changing position in the super-symbolic economy. Accountants and managers who attempt to quantify added value and assign it to specific subsidiaries or profit centers are compelled to make arbitrary, often quite subjective judgments, since conventional accounting typically ignores the value-generating importance of “organizational capital” and all these like “good will” only crudely and inadequately reflect the mounting importance of such assets. #RandolphHarris 15 of 24

Management theorists are belatedly beginning to speak of “organizational capital.” However, there is also what might be called “positional capital”—the strategic location of the firm in the overall web-work of mosaics and meta-mosaics. In any given industry, a crucial position in one of these wealth-producing systems is money in the bank—and power in the pocket. To be frozen out or forced to the periphery can be disastrous. All this suggests that the big corporation or company is no longer necessarily the central institution for the production of material wealth in the capitalist World and the advanced economies generally. What we are seeing is the divorce of the big corporation from the key material processes of wealth creation. These are performed by small and medium-sized business or by the subcorporations called profit centers. With so much of the hands-on work done in these units, the functions of top management in the large corporation have less and less to do with enduring production and more to do with setting very general strategic guidelines; organizing and accounting for capital; litigating and lobbying; and substituting information for all the other factors of production. This delegation or contracting-out of many of the functions of the large corporation—once the central production institution in the economy—has a historical precedent. The industrial revolution stripped away many of the functions from the traditional family—that other key institution of society. Education went to the schools, care of the elderly went to the state, work was transferred to the factory, and so forth. #RandolphHarris 16 of 24

Today, since many of its former functions can be carried out by small units armed with high-powered information technology, the large business firm is being similarly stripped of some of its traditional reasons for being. The family did not disappear after the industrial revolution. However, it became smaller, took on more limited responsibility, and lost much of its power vis-à-vis other institutions in the society. The same is happening to the large corporation as we transit out of the smokestack era dominated by Brobdingnagian business. In short, even as big corporations expand, the significance of the corporation, as an institution, contracts. It is still too early for any of us fully to understand the power-mosaics that are now rapidly taking form and the long-term destiny of the corporation. However, once thing is certain: The notion that a tiny handful of giant companies will dominate tomorrow’s economy is a comic-book caricature of reality. In 1981, Ronald Regan was a newly elected president with tremendous popular appeal. However, could he carry his vision for tax reform through Congress? The battle lines were drawn in the fight over his first budget proposal. The Democrats wanted Reagan to compromise, sacrificing part of the tax cut for the sake of a smaller deficit. The Republicans wanted the full dose of supply-side economies. The outcome would depend on how the two parties played game. In the Senate, the Democrats went along with Reagan’s budget, hoping to induce some Republican compromise in return for the bipartisan support. However, the Republicans held firm to the original plan. Thus the scene turned to the House of Representatives. Was there some better strategy for the Democrats? #RandolphHarris 17 of 24

A pair of New York Times columns by Leonard Silk neatly laid out the strategic possibilities. As he described the negotiations, each party had two choices and there were four possible outcomes. Republicans triumph, Democrats avoid blame. Republicans win, but vex Reagan; Democrats share credit. Republican program blocked in House; Democrats incur blame. Republicans lose much of program; Democrats look fiscally responsible. The Democrats regard as best the outcome where they attack Regan and the Republicans compromise, because the Democrats can claim the credit for fiscal responsibility while implementing their favored budget. For the Republicans, the best outcome occurs in the top left, where Reagan’s budget gets bipartisan support. When the Democrats attack while the Republicans hold firm, the result is a stalemate and both parties lose. The Democrats would be willing to moderate their attack if the Republicans would compromise; both parties would get their second-best outcome. The Democrats’ main problem is that the Republicans have a dominant strategy: support Regan completely. If the Democrats mainly support Reagan, the Republicans should support Reagan completely to attain their top outcome. If the Democrats attack Reagan, the Republicans should support Reagan to avoid their worst outcome. Whatever the Democrats do, it is always better for the Republicans to support Reagan completely. Reagan completely leaves the Republicans in a better position than the Democrats, no matter what strategy the Democrats choose. #RandolphHarris 18 of 24

Thus the Republican strategy seems easy to predict. The Democrats should expect the Republicans to support Reagan completely, and then the Democrats do best by following suit and mainly supporting Reagan. This is exactly what happened in the Senate. So far, the outcome greatly favors the Republicans. To improve their position, the Democrats need to make some type of strategic move. They must turn the situation into a sequential move game, moving first and then letting the Republicans respond to their strategy. Since the Republicans are already at their most preferred outcome, there is nothing they can do to improve their position. Their goals is simply to maintain the status quo. It is in their interest to prevent the Democrats from making any strategic move that changes the outcome of the game. Thus we consider what type of threats, promises, or other moves shift the outcome in favor of the Democrats. None of the basic strategies seem to work for the Democrats. Unconditional moves, promises, even threats all fail. Only the combined use of a threat and promise can induce Republican compromise. The problem with unconditionality is that it does not influence the Republican position. The Democrats are currently expected to support Reagan. Committing themselves to this action does not alter the Republicans’ perception and thus leads to the same outcomes. The only strategic possibility is for the Democrats to attack Reagan unconditionally. In this case, they can look forward and reason that the Republicans will still respond by supporting Reagan completely. (The Republicans always prefer to support Reagan completely—it is their dominant strategy.) #RandolphHarris 19 of 24

However, the combination of Democrats attacking with the Republicans giving complete support is worse for the Democrats than the alternative of both parties supporting Reagan. The Democrats want to induce the Republicans to move from completely supporting Reagan to compromise. Therefore, they might promise to support Reagan if the Republicans agree to compromise. If the Republicans agree, the Democrats will have an incentive to renege on the deal. This promise must be irreversible in order to have an effect. However, the promise will not help them. The Republicans know that if they ignore the promise and choose to support Reagan completely, the Democrats’ best response is to support Reagan. The effect of the Democrats’ promise is that they end up unconditionally supporting Reagan. The Republicans appreciate this gesture and proceed to support Reagan completely, maintaining the best outcome. The promise is pointless. The Republicans can safely ignore it. The Democrats have only one threat that they can use to stop the Republican support of Reagan. They can threaten to attack Reagan is the Republicans support him completely. However, the threat is not enough. The effect of the threat is tht the Democrats have unconditionally committed to attack Reagan. If the Republicans support Reagan, the Democrats carry out their threat and attack Reagan; if the Republicans compromise, it is the Democrats’ best interest to attack Reagan. Since the Democrats attack Reagan whatever the Republicans do, the Republicans support Reagan completely, making the best of the two possibilities. #RandolphHarris 20 of 24

A promise ends up being equivalent to unconditional Democrat support for Reagan, while a threat is equivalent to an unconditional Democrat attack on Reagan. Neither is effective in changing the Republicans’ actions. If the Democrats combine a promise with a threat, they can achieve a better result for themselves. They should promise to support Regan if the Republicans compromise and threaten to attach Reagan if the Republicans support Reagan completely. This strategy achieves the Democrats’ goals. With this threat and promise in place, the Republicans must choose between compromising and getting the Democrats to mainly support Reagan, or supporting Reagan completely and thereby provoking the Democrats to attack Reagan. Between these two alternatives, they prefer the compromise. What actually happened was that Republicans supported Reagan completely in both the Senate and in the House. The Senate Democrats went along with the Republicans. In the House, the Democrats’s initial resistance quickly gave way to a third strategy: they out-Reaganed Reagan in the tax-cutting game. The result was a bipartisan “Christmas-tree” tax cut. The economic bills for tht are just coming due, and the negotiations to get out of the difficulty are developing into new strategic games. New problems require thinking beyond the edges of the known, and no problem needs new thinking more than the ever-worsening global energy crisis. Today it is clear that our existing energy system is heading toward a climatic crash, not merely because of the amount of energy required but because of its centralized infrastructures and overconcentrated ownership. Both of these were, and perhaps are still, appropriate for industrial economies. However, they are decidedly inappropriate for dispersed knowledge-intensive economies increasingly based on intangibility. #RandolphHarris 21 of 24

The economic rise of countries such as China and India heightens demand for energy at a time when it costs more and more to extract crude oil from the Earth, when growing reliance on fossil fuels exacerbates ecological problems and when oil comes from some of the most politically unstable regions on the planet. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, approximately 4000 quadrillion Btu of energy per year were bought and sold in World energy markets. They mainly came from oil, natural gas, coal, and nuclear sources, with oil in the dominate source, providing approximately 40 percent of the total. The U.S.A. Department of Energy forecast that by 2025 the total would climb to 623 Btu, a rise of 54 percent. Despite this increase in demand, the DoE assured us that fossil-fuel process are “projected to remain relatively low” and that alternative energy sources “are not expected to become competitive” unless government policies to reduce greenhouse-gas emission, as called for under the Kyoto Protocol, are implemented—at which time “nuclear power and renewable energy sources such as hydroelectricity, geothermal, biomass, solar and wind power could become more attractive.” In short, expect nothing too exciting. Contrast this with forecast of pessimist-in-chief Matthew R. Simmons, an influential energy-industry investment banker. Simmons, using oil as a proxy for the energy picture as a whole, tells us that many of the World’s most important oil fields are in “serious decline,” that we cannot trust the industry’s estimates of underground reserves and that finding new oil more and more expensive. #RandolphHarris 22 of 24

Add the fact that tankers, refineries, drilling rigs and people are all “nearing 100 percent capacity,” he says, and this is a problem that “will take a decade(s?) to correct.” Worse yet, he notes, oil companies and electric utilities, like other industries that have sifted to just-in-time operations, have minimized their backup supplies, setting the stage for catastrophe. The energy crisis is, at least in part, a radical consequence of de-synchronization at work—the rise of Asian demand coming much faster than the industry and the market anticipated. That helps explain why there may not be enough new tankers built in time, enough refineries or enough inventory stored for emergencies. Having made his compelling case, Simmons steps back from doomsday, saying, more cheerfully, that “man’s creativity seems at its best at times of great crisis.” However, none of these projections takes adequate account of many possible developments that could change the picture for better or worse: Social upheavals and economic slowdowns in China, India, or both; regional epidemics causing massive populations of declines; Chinese control of the Malacca Strait and sea lanes by which oil reaches Asia from the Middle East; or little-noticed technological changes that may well reduce energy requirements—for example, the continued miniaturization of products, reducing weight, transport and storage requirements. Even more important is the approaching demise of the internal combustion engine and its replacement by hydrogen-powered fuel cells. Within a few years we will see a million fuel-cell cars on the roads in China, where they do not have as big a legacy gasoline distribution system as we do. #RandolphHarris 23 of 24

We will have cars whose 110-kilowatt fuels cells can also serve as an auxiliary power source. So, in rural areas, where there is no electricity, you can drive to a village, plug it into the car, and provide energy for fuel cells or other proposes. Clearly, while there will be many false steps and failures along the way, we are edging out of the fossil-fuel era. Another area of concern is the human body. Assaults from outside the body turn it into a battlefield where the aggressors sometimes get the upper hand. From parasitic worms to protozoa to fungi to bacteria to viruses, organisms of many kinds have learned to live by entering the body and using their molecular machinery to build more of themselves from the body’s building blocks. To meet this onslaught, the body musters the defenses of the immunes system—an armada of its own molecular machines. Your body’s own amoebalike white blood cells patrol the bloodstream and move out into tissue, threading their way between other cells, searching for invaders. How can the immune system distinguish the hundred of kinds of cells that should be in the body from the invading cells and viruses that should not? This has been the central question of the complex science of immunology. The answer, as yet only partially understood, involves a complex interplay of molecules that recognize other molecules by sticking to them in a selective fashion. These include free-floating antibodies—which are a bit like bumbling guided missiles—and similar molecules that are bound to the surface of white blood cells and other cells of the immune system, enabling to recognize foreign surfaces on contact. First the immune system does not respond to all invaders, or responds inadequately. Malaria, tuberculosis, herpes, and other illnesses have their strategies for evading destruction. Cancer is a special case in which the invaders are altered cells of the body itself, sometimes successfully masquerading as healthy cells escaping detection. Second, the immune system sometimes overresponds, attacking cells that should be left alone. Certain kinds of arthritis, as well as lupus and rheumatic fever, are caused by this mistake. Between attacking when it should not and not attack when it should, the immune system often fails, causing suffering and death. #RandolphHarris 24 of 24

MAGNOLIA STATION AT CRESLEIGH RANCH

Rancho Cordova, CA |

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