America, Minus A Human Factor

Acute digestive conditions -- urp -- are going down.

Of course, too much faith in numbers has consequences.

In 1980, IBM predicted that the total market for personal computers in the following 10 years would be something like that year's 246,000. Not 250,000, but a nicely precise, confidence-inspiring 246,000. The actual outcome was almost exactly 100 times greater. If the leaders of IBM had been more optimistic, would they have ever dreamed of letting their operating system be supplied by some snot-nosed kid named Gates?

Tysons Corner looks the way it does because it was created by the marketplace for commercial real estate. The marketplace is a wonderful thing, allowing us to eat good food and live in nice houses. But, by definition, the market can process only things that can be measured in dollars. Not all things can. "Beauty" is notoriously difficult to quantify. Thus we have this strange world in the early 21st century in which Americans remain the most widely traveled and highly educated civilization in history. Many of us know firsthand the difference between Paris and the old East Berlin. Yet emulating the lessons of the Left Bank and what constitutes "nice" does not easily plug into the numbers of "the deal."

Here's what we know:

Foreign travel by U.S. residents climbed from $1.307 billion a little more than a century ago (in 1987 dollars), to $2.893 billion in similar constant dollars in 1929.

Spending on higher education per year soared from $380 million to $2.893 billion in that 29-year period.

Meanwhile, the automobile had begun its relentless roll. We spent $2.6 billion on new cars in 1929, just before the stock market crash. That spending dropped to $600 million in 1932 and essentially nothing during the war years. Then came the postwar boom. New car sales accelerated to $10.3 billion in 1950. Fifteen years later, increases by tens of billions of dollar became regular, passing $20 billion in 1965, $40 billion in 1977 (after a dip during the first energy crisis), and $80 billion in 1985, finally hitting $99 billion in 1986, when it began to level off and even shrink. In part that's because used car sales began to take off. From a market of essentially zero in 1929, used car sales were more than $20 billion in 1984, and $50 billion in 1995.

The built environment that now surrounds us, marked by shopping centers and office campuses -- and their parking lots -- is the result.

We may define ourselves and others by numbers -- he's a GS15, she's a 36-24-36.

But numbers tell you everything, and nothing. What does knowing what a slave cost tell you about being a slave? Did anyone record how many migraines slaves had? What did they weigh? How much did they eat?

Counting things may have started as an act of faith, giving us control over the universe. If you can count the days, you can determine how much food and firewood you'll need until spring returns, giving you control over nature, or so the builders of Aztec temples and Stonehenge believed.

But the world doesn't really look like numbers, although it does obey Einstein's laws.

"The world is a buzzingly complicated thing," Sutch agrees. "To make sense of it, we abstract. We don't tell you everything we see and smell and hear. We pick out what we think is important. Think of it as a painting or a poem. It may be meaningful, beautiful or evoking emotion. But it is incomplete. That's why Magritte, in his painting of an apple, wrote below it, in French, 'This is not an apple.' Social scientists would say the same thing. These are abstractions with a purpose, to say something insightful or provocative about concerns people have today."

That's why thumbing through the Millennial Edition is like cleaning out your mother's attic and finding a big old box of snapshots. You compulsively make connections. Was that Grandfather Alphonse? What a bizarre moustache. No wonder cousin Fred looks the way he does. This photo of a woman in a tennis outfit. Was that Aunt Agnes before she became a nun? Wow. Great legs.

The photos are pretty random and not much of a narrative until they are made into an album, probably with the help of an older relative. You can piece this album together however you wish. But until then, you don't have a story of who you are and how you got that way. All you've got is a box of historical snapshots.