Burning off the useless eaters

[Tim May]

On Friday, May 2, 2003, at 02:32  PM, Tim May wrote:
(quoting Thomas Shaddack)

>> Contemporary free markets (we'll leave aside the fact they aren't 
>> really
>> free) are driven by short-term profits. Higher investments aimed to
>> distant future are rare and far between. Basic research suffers, like
>> virtually everything with no immediate profitable application.
>
> Nonsense. Basic research is being done by many people. Corporations 
> have never been the best place for blue-sky, academic research. This 
> is one reason the U.S. and Western Europe have thousands of excellent 
> universities and colleges offering Ph.D. programs and all the things 
> that go with them (professors doing research, grant money, tie-ins 
> with corporations, etc.).
>
> "Research" is a very broad topic, covering many fields and many 
> issues. Issues of basic physics vs. applied technology, issues of 
> biological principles vs. new drugs and new tools, issues of 
> fundamental mathematics vs. computer programming.
>
> I think research is doing very well. Some fields are "mined out" in 
> terms of major new paradigms, at least in terms of the energies and 
> scales we can now probe. Some are undergoing rapid change. Some are 
> hotbeds of academic research, some are most closely related to 
> corporation projects. All to be expected.

I want to add something to this, as the topic (and Thomas' views) are 
both angering me and stimulating me to write about this.

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.

The same ferment is also happening in several other fields. Physics 
went through this ferment in the 1920s-60s, though things have tapered 
off in the past couple of decades (with some conspicuous exceptions).

Item: In today's news is a report that two groups have sequenced the 
SARS virus. Which brings up "sequencing." A single guy, a surfer and 
LSD user at UC San Diego, invented polymerase chain reaction (PCR) as a 
way of "amplifying" tiny samples into things which machines could 
sequence. Hence was gene sequencing invented. Not a corporate lab, but 
a guy thinking about things as he paddled his surfboard. Similar 
examples abound.

Item: In crypto, Diffie and Hellman were at Stanford, Merkle was at 
Berkeley, and Rivest, Shamir, and Adelman were at MIT. Again, no 
corporate labs. Nobody either "stifling innovation" or "failing to 
support basic research." Also in crypto, David Chaum was at UC Santa 
Barbara working on his ideas, then at Berkeley (affiliated or living 
there, doesn't much matter).

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.

(There are some practical reasons why corporations are usually not 
great places for very basic research. I could write a few pages on 
this, but will not do so here.)

I think innovation is doing perfectly well, and I further think the 
innovations which have come out of the corporate/capitalist/open 
society/Western system have been a whole lot greater in all respects 
than what have come out of socialist/closed society/Iron Curtain 
systems.

Which makes claims that capitalism is not doing enough research even 
more wrong-headed.

Thanks to Thomas for triggering this rant, though.


--Tim May
"The Constitution is a radical document...it is the job of the 
government to rein in people's rights." --President William J. Clinton