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Technology Collaboration

 

Discussion on leadership

 

4/5/2004 8:11 AM

 

Paul,

 

The main thing that could help us all is more funding for long-term research.  There is nothing wrong with funding engineering projects that address well-defined goals.  But the real breakthroughs come from long-term support of fundamental science by small, independent groups of researchers.

 

Your said: Your note tells of a struggle that is going on.   For you, myself and many others.

 

What bothers me is the phrase "alternative to". I do not see any problem with supporting many alternatives -- on the contrary, I believe that we should support many more alternatives.

 

But what I don't like to see is the idea that one kind of research has to be funded at the expense of reducing the funding for some other research. Nobody is smart enough to predict where the next major developments will be coming from, and I would much rather see much greater funding for all science rather than pitting one paradigm against another.

 

The biggest struggle is not between one academic field and another, but between long-term scientific research and foolish boondoggles.  The most glaring boondoggle of all is the notion of manned missions to the moon and Mars.

 

There is little or no benefit to be obtained by sending people on very hazardous and dubious missions.  I am a strong supporter of NASA and projects such as the Hubble telescope.  But throwing away a trillion dollars on Mars is stupid.  A tiny fraction of that waste would lead to enormous benefits here on earth.

 

Your said: What is on the horizon that might change the   situation in a positive way?

 

Scientifically, it is very hard to predict what kind of research is most likely to bear fruit. I therefore recommend more funding for a larger number of small projects.  If and when any of those projects begin to show results, then the funding for them should be continued, perhaps for years -- but only when they produce results.

 

As an example, Tim Berners-Lee and a very small group achieved something valuable in implementing the basic software for the World Wide Web.  Shortly thereafter, the Mosaic group in Illinois developed the first successful browser, which evolved into Netscape.  Both of those groups were tiny, and they achieved something great.

 

After the initial efforts bore fruit, thousands of additional volunteers and businesses jumped on the bandwagon to build and extend the WWW.

 

Over the past 4 years, however, an enormous amount of funding has been poured into the semantic web, and the W3C has failed to achieve anything remotely comparable to the successes of the original WWW or the original Mosaic in the same length of time.

 

The basic lesson to be learned is that major advances are not created by large boondoggles, but by small groups working independently.  Those that produce something promising should get more funding to continue.  But I don't like to see major amounts of funding spent on unproven ideas.  I believe that unproven, but promising ideas deserve some funding at low levels, but the funding should not be increased to the levels needed for an engineering effort until the pilot projects demonstrate results.

 

John Sowa

 

Postscript

 

I have no objections to a conference to look at new ideas to explore and directions to pursue.

 

As I said before, I object to the phrase "alternatives to".  That prejudges the entire conference.  It's fine to have an inquiry into what has been done and where we should put more funding.  But the stress should be on the positive:  what new ideas should we fund, not what things should we stop funding.

 

What do you mean "first" conference?  There have been many, many conferences that have taken a look at the past and asked questions about the future.