Roman Itskovich

“We laugh at the naivete of celebrities who complain about the public’s fascination with the intimate details of their lives. Movie and television stars, pop singers, politicians - public figures all - should necessarily understand that the inevitable price of becoming a public figure is the loss of privacy.”

Movie and television stars, pop singers and politicians have something in common - they are all public figures that influence the mind and lives of many. Another thing that is common to all of them is the fact that the public seems to have an irresistible fascination to the personal affairs of such folk. The reason for this fascination is different for each class of public figures, but remains strong with all of them.

Actors are the modern age most important entertainers. People nowadays watch more T.V. and movies than engage in any other form of entertainment. Actors entertain by acting various scenes that are created as to influence the imagination of the audience, take it to other worlds, to great mysteries and often invoke strong feelings. In their line of work, the person acting a character is often confused by the public with the role he is playing, a connection is made within the minds of the audience between the appearance, demenor and voice of the actor with his role. This leads to fascination in the actors personal life, because one no longer reads in the tabloids about the new ski’s of Arnold Schwartseneger - but about the new ski’s of the Terminator himself.

Same as actors, Singers and other music performers are entertainers. The fascination with their lives derives part of its strength from a somewhat different reason. I think that in this case the most important reason is aspiration. A singer on a stage is a magnificent thing to watch, he looks very secure, very energetic and generally as being a grand manifestation of a man or a women. Furthermore, the singers ability to exhale thousands of people in concerts looks very powerfull. This causes people to dream to become singers themselves and aspire to gain this level of personal carisma and influence. Thus, people are trying to glean everything they can about their favorite signer or band in order to try to understand how to achieve the position they achieved. This is true especially for children and teenagers, who nowadays, seem to be overly driven by pop singers. Still, a part of the public’s fascination with singers have the same reasons as their fascination with actors.

Politicians are also very susceptible to public scrutiny, but for an altogether different reason. In a Democracy, politicians are chosen to act as representatives of the people in the government. They are chosen basing on what details are known about their personal lives, their beliefs, their ambitions and whatever agenda they claim they have. Thus, the public is always looking for details about them in order to better evaluate them for next elections. It is impossible to get inside a politician’s head, so the only thing remaining is learning as many details as possible about them by any other mean and trying to guess what’s in there. Eventually, politicians are the one’s to decide on public policy that influences everyone, one does not want to go wrong about the person he chooses to represent him.

Politicians and Enterntainers of all kinds are public figures. Being public figures these men and women influence many lives and minds. Politicians are doing so by creating rules and laws that influence citizen, Enterntainers by feeding the masses with ideas, hopes and dreams. Being public figures these folk have chosen to lead a life in which a constant relationship with the masses is a must. The loss of privacy is just a natural aspect of this kind of life.

“The simple absence of data has never been enough to stop fools from inventing theories.”

A theory is a tool created in the absence of data in order to try to predict that data, or explain a previously unknown phenomenon. If all data is present and we know everything about a phenomenom no theory is needed. Throught the ages, many great inventors have created theories that have been proven only years after they have been created, the same theories that are used to this day. Can they be considered fools? I don’t think so, because if they do, the very essence of human creativity will be condemned.

Can we consider Leonardo Da Vinci to be a fool? Da Vinci is known as a greate artist of the reinassance. He is also know for his writings, that include his ideas on physics, engineering medicine and many others. Importantly, Da Vinci often wrote about things that were not known in his time, and there were no data in proving or disproving them. For example, Drawings of a flying machine were found about Da Vinci’s papers. His theories was radical at his time, no one thought of flying using a rotory blade, and no materials strong and light enough existed in order to prove his theory. Nevertheless, Da Vinci is considered today to be the father of the modern Helicopter.

Another example to the power of theorizing can be found in the physics field known as Astronomy, where the movement of the stars is predicted using complex mathematical models. Astronomers will not be able to prove their predictions of movement of distant stars without hundreds of years of waiting and actually going to the stars to observe them. However, using theories and extrapolation from the little data they do have, astronomers are able to make precise predictions. For Instance, copernicus in his model of the solar system was able to predict the movement of the plantes accurately. Furthermore, astronomers can find the mass of whole planets by using their theories. And although they don’t actually have data to work with, or direct measures of testing their theories, Astronomy is considered to be an esteemed area of Physics.

Weather forecasts is another interesting example of theorizing. Weather forecast invovles predicting the weather in the future, naturally of which there is no concrete information. Complex statistical models are used for those predictions, which accuracy is becoming better and better every year. If we have had the information about the weather in the future, theories wouldn’t be needed. But we don’t, so prediction theories are vital for us in this field.

Human nature is to overcome lack of data by theorizing. History reveals that many of inventors known today for their great theories were considered fools at their time - but in no means can someone creating theories should be considered as such. Invention and theorizing is the force that moves humanity forward, and as such can never be considered foolish.

“Complete publicity makes it absolutely impossible to govern”. (Kierkegaard)

In order to analyze this statement we first must define the term “Complete publicity”. In the following piece, I am going to regard complete publicity to the extreme, in a way that reminds “1984″ by george orwell. Under this definition, everyone inside and outside the state know absolutely everything about the affairs of that state, including the character and profile of it’s rulers, their public policy plans and their secret agenda. We will find that under these conditions the government is not able to hold an effective foreign policy, form a stable coalition and collect taxes efficiantly.

Complete publicity could effectively destroy the ability to create a sustainable foreign policy by the government. I would like to illustrate this claim using an example of the situation between the united states and Russia during the cold war days. In those days the detterant force of each of the super-powers was the only thing that kept them from a total war. This equilibrium was achieved by creating effective threats of immediate action by both states in case the other state decides to attack, a thing impossible if we assume complete publicity in one of the states. If that was the case, the state that had complete publicity was quickly subdued by the other state.

The same is true in regarding coalition formation in the government. Here I’m considering a government similar to the Israeli one, where the ruling party must create a coalition with smaller parties in order to get the majority of the parliament. In this case, and under complete publicity, the ruling party’s power in coalition negotiations would be diminished greatly. If that is the case, government instability may occur because no coalition may be created - which could lead to an effective state without stable government for the state, something that is very undesirable. This situation could become permanent because even if re-elections occur, the new major party still won’t be able to create a stable coalition.

Finally, under complete publicity the deterrent force of the government in domestic affairs would be badly hurt. For instance, the tax collection system. The deterrent force of the tax collection system is derived from the fact that inspections are made on a random basis. The tax collection system does not have to check each individual and enterprise, but can choose a small sample on which it does it’s auditing. This serves as enough incentive to the whole population, including those that haven’t been audited ever, to pay their taxes accurately and on time. Under complete publicity this ability is taken away from the tax collection system. For this reason, in order to effectively collect taxes, each and every one in the economy must be audited - because there is complete information to everyone, and those that know that they won’t be audited simply won’t pay the taxes. This could lead to a very inefficient tax collection system, and may disrupt government resources materially.

In conclusion, we have considered three key issues in creating and maintaining public policy and governance. We found that complete publicity makes it impossible to hold an effective foreign policy, create a stable coalition and collect taxes efficiently. Clearly, no government can survive without these key elements. Thus, I believe that under complete publicity it is absolutely impossible for a government to exist and thus to govern. However, publicity is an important part of democracy, and must be exersized to some extent in any democratic regime.

“In this electronic age, reading has inevitably taken a back seat to watching television and gleaning information from the World Wide Web. People learn far more readily from electronic media than they do from print.”

It is claimed that the electronic age, the invent of the television and the Internet have weakened the position of reading as a major source of entertainment and learning. This claim is based on the notion that if once, before the invention of television, the most popular form of home entertainment was reading, it is not so now. Today, most of home entertainment is based on watching television and Surfing the Internet. In this piece I would like to show that reading has actually regained it’s position in the last few years, and the reasons why I think it will remain important in the coming future.

Reading nowadays have improved drastically from the beginning of the electronic age. If we consider the eighties and nineties - Internet was mostly unavailable, and the only form of home entertainment were watching television or reading a book. Inevitably, often a choice between them had to be made. The World Wide Web (Or Internet) have actually changed that. Today, the Internet is another form of home entertainment that is wildly used. In order to use the internet you have to read. While there are media rich sites - such as Youtube - still, most of the internet is text based. Furthermore, Internet have made text based entertainment much more available and thus increased reading.

Accordingly, watching television, nowadays, more and more gives way to the Internet. If we consider the kids population, which I believe to be the largest user of home based entertainment, what we will find is important. Today, more and more kids spend hours in front of the computer. It’s true - some of the time they spend playing games - but interestingly, most of it they spend online chatting and reading. While to chat can’t be considered classical reading, it does requaire linguistic skills. Moreover, the phenomenom of blogs - or online journals - is gaining popularity in the last few years. A blog is simply a journal that is kept online. Kids spend increasing amounts of time playing with blogs, which inherently make them read quiet a lot. In short, the Internet has somewhat reduced the impact of television, while encouraging the young population to read much more if we compare them to the young population of the eighties.

People learn far more readily from electronic media than they do from print. While this statement maybe true in some cases, it is far from it in others. First, even if learning is done using electronic media, this media in most cases is texts - so reading is an essential part of the learning process. Second, at least in my experience the bulk of learning nowadays is done from printed media. As a recent University graduate I haven’t seen much electronic media used for learning. And finally, if we consider that an electronic text is still a text, and have no essential difference from it’s printed counterpart - we see that even though some learning is done from electronic media, it is the same as learning from printed media.

In conclusion, reading is still a very important part of our entertainment and learning. Furthermore, in the past few years, reading gained momentum through the use of Internet, while becoming even more dominant than in the beginning of the electronic age. Reading also holds it’s position in everything to do with learning. I believe that until new esoteric forms of media aren’t invented, reading will hold it’s popularity and importance.

“It is always an individual who is the impetus for innovation; the details may be worked out by a team, but true innovation results from the enterprise and unique perception of an individual.”

History remembers specific names in context of great accomplishments and innovations. One should ask himself if this is so because great ideas are the product of individuals, or because it is simply much easier to remember one name instead of many.

Better understanding of this question lies in how one defines team work. One should ask himself what exactly is team work. If we take it to the literal meaning, a picture of a team of sailors hauling a sail together, all pulling one rope comes in mind. Ironically, this is exactly the case in the world of ideas. When inventing or thinking of ideas we find team work as well. Here, team work manifests itself as the discussion of different ideas, working together on a solution to a problem or even reading articles and books. If a researcher bases his idea on something he had read - he is actually cooperating in a manner with the writer, and this should also be considered as team work.

The Academic world - which I believe to be a great source of innovation - is based on cooperation and team work. For instance, all academics spend considerable amount of time every year attending conferences. The sole purpose of which is to share information among researchers as well as to gain new perspectives and ideas. The eagerness with professors attend this conferences, and the magnitude of this phenomena suggest that conferences play a vital role in scientific innovation. Furthermore, nowadays many co-authored articles are being published. After considering these facts one can not claim that scientific innovation is made in a vacuum, but rather, it is a product of cooperation inside the scientific community.

We find much more individualism in the business world. The business world is a competitive environment in which cooperation is much more sporadic than in the academia. People have much less incentive to share their ideas, because if they do - they can find competition gaining fast on their new discoveries, and thus loose the edge of it. Examples of this can be stock traders that have invented a new trading method. Even so, one can not argue that innovation has been the source of one person. There always are advisors, co-workers and competitors that motivate and give the spark to the process that eventually comes up with an Idea.

Ideas are not created in a vacuum. They are always based on other, older ideas and concepts. It is true that eventually history ties the name of an innovation to a specific name like Nuclear energy to Einstein, Electricity to Edison and many others. Still, if we delve deeper and give a better look at the circumstances, we will see that all these ideas were the consequences of some sort of cooperation. Innovation truly stands on the shoulders of giants.