As I tracked the spread of my uncle's baldness — a predictor of my own hairline — I studied harder and harder to compensate. My uncle eventually got so bald that I became valedictorian. I'm fairly certain that millions of other bespectacled, height-challenged introverts found academic excellence the same way.

The unpleasant truth is that corporate America depends on a steady supply of ugly people like me, people who know they won't survive by their looks alone. The cruel irony is that genetic engineers — themselves products of this smartening process — are threatening to dry up our wellspring of scientists and technologists — and the people who draw cartoons about them.

I try to ease my fears of the future by telling myself there will always be people who acquire skills for purely intrinsic reasons: perhaps for the love of learning, the thrill of the challenge, that sort of crap. Surely, I say to myself, people can't be so shallow that they work only for money. I am highly persuaded by my own arguments until I talk to any other human being.

I recently gave a speech to managers of a fast-growing Silicon Valley company. Before I began, the CEO pulled me aside to tell me about the audience. He said they had all become rich from company stock options and didn't need to work anymore. The CEO explained that the managers stayed on because they were intrinsically motivated to make the world a better place.

I was happy to be surrounded by such altruism. It gave me a tingly sensation that lasted almost two minutes, until one of the managers — not knowing what the CEO had just told me — pulled me aside to give his analysis of the audience. He explained that although everyone there had made a bundle of money, they were all still greedily pumping the cash cow with both hands — and in some cases lips — eager to exit early with the maximum possible net worth. He explained that none of them wanted to risk running out of money after leaving because if that happened, they might have to return to work at the hellhole they left. I asked about his higher purpose, to make the world a better place. He laughed. Intrinsic motivation exists, but when you're predicting the future of corporate America, follow the money.

Clearly, any change in how kids perceive the future will influence how they prepare for it. In fact, the current shortage of engineers is sometimes blamed on me. According to some pundits, kids read the Dilbert comic strip and decide they don't want to spend their life confined to cubicles and being menaced by pointy-haired bosses. I don't know if that's true, but it does pass the sniff test. According to the parents who e-mail me, a lot of family conversations are beginning with the question, "Mommy, what's a mission statement?" and ending with the entire family in tears.

Prior to Dilbert, people prepared for corporate America without really knowing what it would be like. Today kids have Dilbert to guide them. I like to think I have steered people away from unpleasant corporate jobs, thus contributing to the entrepreneurial boom. But maybe I've reduced the number of future engineers below the level needed to maintain technology, thereby condemning civilization to a second Dark Age. (When my parents ask me what I've been doing lately, I rarely mention that part.)

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