At 02:55 PM 5/2/03 -0700, Tim May wrote: ...
Item: Research in astrophysics and cosmology is booming today. No corporate interest in figuring out the role of dark matter, dark energy, superstrings, anthropic reasons for the neutrino mass, inflation, and a dozen other currently hot topics. Much of the work came from the fruits of industrial development, just as much of the astronomy work of the past 150 years, even longer, has come from industrial methods and tools. In the 1930s, the ability to construct very large Pyrex mirrors...I lived in the 1950s within a pleasant Sunday drive to Mount Palomar, for a long time the very largest telescope in the world.
Nitpick: You could argue that much of the research in physics wouldn't be happening without substantial government funding for research. Certainly, it's hard to see who would be funding a lot of this stuff with any eye to practical applications within their lifetimes. ...
I reject the claim that corporations and capitalism are either stifling innovation or that innovation is not happening because corporations aren't doing "enough" basic research.
This is obviously true. In fact, hearing people say that capitalism stifles innovation, and offering the modern US as an example, is a bit mind-numbing. The pace of innovation in almost every field is breathtaking. Imagine taking a modern, Wal-Mart-available solar powered scientific calculator, and dropping it on Leslie Groves' desk in 1943. That whole group of brilliant scientists and engineers working on the first atomic bomb would have had a hell of a time distinguishing the result from space-alien technology, other than the convenient use of our numbering and lettering system. (And they would have been scared s***less when they saw "made in Japan" on the back!) Nor is this just true of this century. Look at the rate of innovation in the US and UK in the 1800s, under more-or-less capitalistic rules. Railroads and telegraphs and steam ships and radio and electricity and chemical fertilizers and pesticides and the germ theory of disease and the very beginning glimmers of modern physics and machine guns and barbed wire and streetcars and mass production factories and modern steel bridges and.... These two centuries have defined the modern world, and whatever the reasons, nearly all the real innovations have happened in mostly capitalistic countries with substantial personal freedom, and (probably more importantly) the ability to let new technology displace incumbents and to allow innovators to be rewarded for their innovation by the opportunity to do still more innovation. ...
--Tim May
--John Kelsey, kelsey.j@ix.netcom.com PGP: FA48 3237 9AD5 30AC EEDD BBC8 2A80 6948 4CAA F259