by publius
This morning I attended a technology roundtable that had lots of interesting panels. The first one was a true all-star cast — e.g., former FCC Chair Reed Hundt, various industry people from Google, Level 3, and Verizon. A second panel discussed the future of technology and innovation. Various interesting points, but here are a few that stood out:
Technology and Immigration
Our immigration policy places a serious drag on the nation’s technological innovation. For instance, the graduate programs of our nation’s finest engineering schools (MIT, etc.) have an enormous number of foreign nationals. With immigration reform, we could keep more of the world’s best minds — now, by contrast, they generally leave (according to these peeps).
Also, reform means more than simply increasing the H-1B cap (a temporary work visa for skilled workers). Someone said something to the effect of “the day you get a PhD from MIT, you should become an American citizen.” Totally totally agree. We need to think bigger about this issue, precisely along these sorts of lines.
Also, I think the political obstacles to this type of reform are not as daunting as they seem. It seems like we can carve this piece out of the larger immigration debate. For obvious reasons, these are not the kind of immigrants that compete for jobs with lower-skilled American workers. You could also make a strong argument that keeping this talent will create a lot of growth and jobs and productivity increases.
The Future of PBS
One panelist — in the course of defending PBS — said that progressives need to rearticulate politically why the nation needs public non-commercial media. For instance, there are some arguments floating around that the rise of the Internet makes a publicly subsidized media less necessary because any idiot with a broadband connection can have a “voice.”
The traditional argument for PBS is that the market simply doesn’t provide the types of programming that we can enjoy on PBS. I do agree, though, that the arguments need some revamping. It seems wise moving forward to expand upon first principles here to secure PBS’s future. Thoughts?
Regulation as Disclosure
One interesting idea gathering some steam in the telecom world is “disclosure as regulation.” The idea is that government could play an important — and relatively low-cost — role by both requiring and publishing various types of information.
There’s a good and a bad side to this. The good side is that more disclosure would allow the government to harness the power of the great Wikipedia masses. Put the information out there and lots of different types of people with different expertise will hopefully use it in different ways. The bad side, though, is that sometimes “disclosure” is thrown up as an alternative to regulations such as net neutrality requirements.
Much of the traditional growth in Asian American communities FOR DECADES has been, a) get graduate degree in American university, b) get a job, c) get married, have children.
And once they have children, they’re not gonna move back. And they frequently become very acculturated into American culture. And they provide a lot of vitality to American society.
Sociologically, they’re gonna become Americans, no ifs, ands or buts. And that should be embraced.
An abstract argument for PBS to be sure, but here’s mine:
Watch The News Hour. Then watch any news program on any commercial network. The latter may win on production values, but on quality of content, the former destroys everything else. To my mind, that’s precisely because of the fact that commercial interests aren’t directly involved.
I think the best thing about PBS is it’s low-key style. Except for the McGlaughlin Group (which almost looks quaint now), PBS lacks the blowhards trying to draw ratings by saying stupid and outrageous things. They just report and leave it at that.
The statement about providing programming unavailable elsewhere is especially true in South Dakota (where I live). A recent attempt to cut funding led to an onslaught of criticism, including as one legislator said “my mother telling me not to mess with her sewing shows”.
As for the disclosure idea, we’ve already seen how companies can fudge that by disclosing so much drivel that the potentially useful information gets hidden in the noise. We need regulators to interpret the blather.
“Except for the McGlaughlin Group (which almost looks quaint now), PBS”
The McLaughlin Group is not a PBS show. Some local PBS stations run it, but that’s all.
reform means more than simply increasing the H-1B cap. Someone said something to the effect of “the day you get a PhD from MIT, you should become an American citizen.” Totally totally agree.
I love it. Yes. We should be importing brains, not exporting them. High-tech is supposedly our business plan for the global market, so why are we training our competition?
Yeah, I know, globalization, world is flat, rising tide floats all boats. Bah. We don’t want a future selling Idaho potatoes to computer tycoons in India.
It’s not like these guys are “stealing American jobs.” Maybe we’ll eventually figure out how to get our own kids as motivated to learn programming as the kids from Southeast Asia, but I’m not holding my breath. In the meantime, while our country is still affluent enough to attract smart immigrants, let’s hang on to them with both hands!
I think PBS has run its day. Yes, I prefer newsier news, but when was the last time they broke a major scoop? They don’t have the budget or the political freedom. And cable has figured out that British import shows sell razor blades, so that’s covered.
I would still like to see subsidized kids shows, b/c toy commercials go to little kids’ heads like crack, but the government can buy time for that on Nickelodeon without owning and operating a whole broadcasting system.
One other reason to let recently educated scientists and engineers stay in the US: in most cases, the US federal government paid to educate them. Graduate students in science and engineering usually have a small stipend and their tuition paid by a research grant, most of which come from the federal government. At my institution, that costs around $200,000 for each Ph.D. student.
So under the current system, we pay to educate them, get some good work out of them while they are students, then lose the big pay-off on the investment by not letting them stay in the U.S. if they want to.
So the anti-immigrant side wants affirmative action for American grad students?
Um, so PBS doesn’t have the budget to do well so it should be scrapped? How about funding it instead!
Public media is the best barrier we have against corporate interests that are ruining the news. The problem with CNN, FOX, and all the rest is that they’re driven by profit motive, not news motives. That always leads to more downsizing, crappier stories, and less money spent on news. Non-profit news sources, whether PBS or The Nation, have news and commentary as a goal, not making money.
I could write a book about why public media desperately needs funding, but I’ll just say: Look at the BBC. Compare its news to American news sources. The BBC is publicly funded.
Since this post is nominally related to telecom issues, I feel a certain obligation to comment on it. Gar rahr Verizon sucks yarr! OK, all done.
As a liberal in good standing who loves his Sesame Street, I certainly am not willing to go to the mat for PBS. The real problem with PBS is that the “elite” shows it airs, many of them British in origin, are in direct conflict with the “local, grass-roots” raison d’etre of the program. So we have to decide whether we want a “people’s TV” dedicated to local Hispanic programming or one dedicated to ballet and Helen Mirren. We may like the latter more, but it’s got nothing to do with “people’s TV.” And even if we do fulfill the mission of local grass-roots programming, can we make anyone watch it?
Obviously non-public TV has had a great run in the last ten years, which isn’t over yet probably. Cable is what it is, and there’s now programming on the Internet. I’m not willing to lose elections so that I can watch Jim Lehrer or Michael Gambon on TV (if that’s what’s being asked of me).
“So the anti-immigrant side wants affirmative action for American grad students?”
Well, no, on several points.
1. It’s not an anti-immigrant side. It’s an anti-illegal-immigrant side. The confusion is due to the pro-illegal-immigration side’s interest in conflating immigration with illegal immigration.
2. No, not affirmative action. Essentially what we want is an immigration policy designed around what benefits the nation as a whole, not political elites.
Current de facto immigration policy is based on the principle that highly educated, English literate immigrants compete with the children of elites, while poorly educated, illiterate immigrants do their gardening cheap.
What would be best for the nation would be to turn the brain drain up to “High”, and skim the rest of the world’s intellectual cream.
i have been disappointed more every year by pbs. they used to be better than this.
in addition to more funding, there needs to be an impenetrable barrier between funding and production. when corporations can sponsor one show over another, we get the shows the corporations are willing for us to see. that should not be what public television is about.
the former macneill-lehrer news hour used to be a reasonably informative program — those days are long gone, they now serve up what is effectively only a more genteel version of the crap we can get on commercial teevee. and gwen ifil in particular is past her use-by date — she is no better than the hacks over at cbs, nbc, abc, cnn, msnbc and fox.