It reminds me of Feynman's talk titled "Value of Science": Another value of science is the fun called intellectual enjoyment ......... Is this mere personal enj

It reminds me of Feynman's talk titled "Value of Science": Another value of science is the fun called intellectual enjoyment ......... Is this mere personal enjoyment of value to society as a whole? No! But it is also a responsibility to consider the value of society itself. Is it to arrange matters so that people can enjoy things? If so, the enjoyment of science is as important as anything else. I'm not trying to compare fun from science and fun from iPhone apps; As a species, we probably haven't figured out the purpose of our existence yet (is there one?). We managed to reach the current state of progress because different people did different things, and in the process figured out stuff that we now consider important. Few thousand years ago, someone who spent time trying to understand nature instead of hunting, might have looked like wasting time to his contemporaries. That said, I do agree that solving the class of problems that you were talking about is in general more valuable than writing a game. But people have their own skill levels and personal choices, and we should respect their choices. Also, from my little understanding of economics, in an advanced economy services sector is supposed to account for >>50% of GDP, with entertainment contributing to a significant chunk of those services revenues. So, we should probably get accustomed to more of these iPhone games and 'sheep throwing'. I also agree with you that mainstream media can do much better than glorifying these kind of things.