There is certainly a part of me that feels guilty, sometimes for not taking a more active, direct role in the improvement of people's lives, of our course as a

There is certainly a part of me that feels guilty, sometimes for not taking a more active, direct role in the improvement of people's lives, of our course as a species, of the world in general. Volunteering is wonderful, but clearly that's not what we are talking about here - this is about committing your mind, all the analytical problem solving skills at your disposal, all that drive and ambition, to something that benefits others. But there is another part of me that believes, quite firmly, that you can't force people to be socially responsible and get good results. You can't demand that everyone order their lives for the common good (I seem to recall a guy named Karl had that notion a while back, and the practical application of his ideas didn't turn out so well.) Humans are, by nature, a competitive and self-interested species, and we ignore that reality at our peril. Does this mean we should all be heartless capitalists? No, I don't see it that way. I think it's possible to "trick" human nature, to align personal ambition with something that produces a net good for society. On a more specific note, I think people in our field are part of a valuable and necessary experiment - we are helping to organize the explosion of human knowledge more efficiently, defining a world that didn't even exist in Marx's industrial worker's paradigm, that might never have existed if we were all completely altruistic. So yes, even if what we create seems trivial on the surface, even if we are just saving .01% of the population 4 minutes a day, I think that's worth something. Because you never know what those extra four minutes will bring. Or what other innovations may spring from that little brainstorm you had one day in the laundromat at 1 AM. Here endeth the rant.