Where Have You Gone, Bell Labs? 552
theodp writes "Name an industry that can produce 1 million new, high-paying jobs over the next three years, challenges BusinessWeek. You can't, because there isn't one. And that's the problem. So what's the answer? Basic research can repair the broken US business model, argues BW, saying it's the key to new, high-quality job creation. Scientific research legends like Bell Labs, Sarnoff Corp, and Xerox PARC are essentially gone, or shadows of their former selves. And while IBM, Microsoft, and HP collectively spend $17B a year on R&D, only 3%-5% of that is for basic science. In a post-9/11 world, DARPA's mission has shifted from science to tactical projects with short-term military applications. Cutting back on investment in basic science research may make great sense in the short term, but as corporations and government make the same decision to free-ride off the investments of others, society suffers the 'tragedy of the commons,' wherein multiple actors operating in their self-interest do harm to the overall public good. We've reached that point, says BW, and we're just beginning to see the consequences. The cycle needs to be reversed, and it needs to be done quickly."
Want to get more basic research? (Score:5, Insightful)
There is a really simple idea on how to get more basic research... PAY MORE!!!
Seriously, in a world where artists, movie actors, athletes get completely outrageous salaries (let alone wall street and executives) the answer can be easily found.
It used to be in the old days that you should learn a profession before becoming a professional athlete, actor, etc. Now the payoff of these fields far outweigh learning a "real" field. Look at MTV and this weird chick who thinks that she has talent. In fact want to see what the youth has become look at MTV reality in general...
What do I do? I work in a hedge fund, even though I am a professional mechanical engineer who used to "build real things". I can actually build robots, and industrial production machinery. Because of my upbringing (German) it was ingrained to me to build "real things". I moved to finance because I am of the motto, "if you can't beat them, join them... Your life is too short..."
Surprising (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It's not the business model that is broken. (Score:4, Insightful)
An example: The Army uses mobile PCs with touchscreens that are given out to soldiers in the field. They're made by Toshiba, I believe. What do they run? Windows with some shitty full-screen GUI. Yes, they do crash. The defense budget takes the biggest chunk of the USA's budget. Even with all that money, they still get utter crap peddled to them by "system integrators". How can this be?
Business plan:
1. determine how to maximize profit no matter what
2. repeat indefinitely
Socialism (Score:5, Insightful)
Government spending on R&D? That's socialism! I thought everyone knew that taxes are bullshit. It's not like government funded basic research ever gave us anything useful like the transistor.
Re:Surprising (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah so... (Score:5, Insightful)
All of you Genetisists with your fancy degrees start discovering stuff, but remember if you start playing god again we are going to complain to the governement...
All of you Nuclear Physists start making your reactors and glowey things, but not in my back yard! I don't want that nuclear waste making my McDonalds Double Cheesburger unhealthy!
The same for all of you green energy people with your wind turbines you need to start building this renewable energy! but not in my neighborhood you're destroying the value on my now worthless house!
Clearly this is everyone's fault except for mine, now if you'll excuse me I'm late for second job delivering pizza's I'm glad I never went to college otherwise I might be expected to do something about this! - The American Public
Greentech! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It's not the business model that is broken. (Score:1, Insightful)
Actually, why pay money to do R&D when you can patent generic ideas and then later sue the people who actually do the R&D?
Re:Want to get more basic research? (Score:3, Insightful)
Where have they gone? To the ether... (Score:5, Insightful)
Sometime in the late 60's/early 70's, economists and politicians began to see honest growth based on adding value and fair trade as something that would slow the growth of the US economy, and leave the country unable to pay for the massive military and social programs that we are committed to. How many trillions of dollars were invested in ICBM silos? Strategic Air Command bombers and tankers that are still flying today by the grandchildren of the original pilots because they were never needed in the first place?
We made the switch from scientific and industrial powerhouse to empire. Instead of building factories, we build relationships with dictators. Instead of employing citizens in manufacturing, we exploit peasants in East Asia. I live in Albany, NY. Thanks to government, this area is pretty prosperous. But as you drive west through once-thriving cities like Amsterdam, Utica, Syracuse, Rochester and Buffalo, you are a witness to economic devastation as the region declines to a shadow of its former self.
We live in an age of false prosperity, where our chief export is the wealth of the nation.
Re:Greentech! (Score:5, Insightful)
"Name an industry that can produce 1 million new, high-paying jobs over the next three years", challenges BusinessWeek. The obvious answer is Greentech...
Actually, that's moderately insightful. There's a persistent stereotype that "green" meaning a step backward in technology, but, realistically, it's exactly the opposite-- true green means high technology. Family-farms and kerosene lanterns won't cut it in the 21st century. There's a lot of technology improvements needed-- both in power production, and in improving efficiency, and materials science improvements needed to implement recyclability-- and this represents real market value.
Re:Want to get more basic research? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Surprising (Score:5, Insightful)
If the Wall Street Journal ever catches on, we might be close to some real change.
No, we'll just be in for more bullshit articles about how government regulations are stifling innovation.
What we really need is some basic R&D into why conservatives hold on to the mantra that the free market cures all ills when it's been shown time and again to fail completely in so many areas.
Re:One Research Lab is Still Hiring... (Score:3, Insightful)
They're looking for talented engineers and scientists with LOTS of imagination to take important projects from concept to reality!
Check out their website and apply if you want to turn this trend around!
Having met many IT people who worked for Disney, I assure you that they are some of the brightest people around.
You sometimes hear a remark like "it's a Mickey Mouse operation" intended to suggest that something is a crappy operation.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Disney employs many many bright people to offer products & services that will separate you from your money.
Now, Disney could be doing something more productive, but they are very good at what they do.
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:that's not the tragedy of the commons (Score:5, Insightful)
It kind of is.
Ok, fine. There are many collective action problems, and the Tragedy of the Commons is just one of them. If we're being picky, I suppose you should only use "Tragedy of the Commons" to refer to scenarios in which individual incentives cause a shared resource to be used unsustainably. I think the argument is that, metaphorically, there is a shared resource here (and indeed there is) -- scientific knowledge. Now, perhaps you can actually "use up" this resource by exploiting all the economic opportunities it affords. But I will agree that the metaphor of the commons breaks down here, because the problem is NOT that knowledge is being "overused" but that it is being "underproduced."
So the phrase "Tragedy of the Commons" is used, maybe, a tiny bit out of place, when simple "Freeriding" would have been a better choice. But I'm ok with that. We can call it synecdoche: The writers are using one element (the Tragedy of the Commons) of the set of collective action problems to refer to the entire set. I can live with that.
Re:Individual (Score:5, Insightful)
This is not exactly true. The fact is that the drug industry is making handsome profit at the prices they sell in Canada, Mexico or Europe. They easily recoup their R&D costs. Besides, R&D expenditures in the pharma industry are relatively small part of their budget. For example marketing costs are about 3 times as much (can you turn on TV and not see an add for a prescription drug?) . Even manufacturing costs are higher. The reason for this is that all the basic research as well as some of the drug development is done by universities and payed by grants from the government (NIH, DoE, DoD, NSF) and non-for-profits. Creators and inventors see a hostile environment for profiting off their works, so they stop investing in creating and inventing.
Creators and inventors do what they do because they enjoy it. Making money is a second or third motivator. If it was the primary goal they would be in marketing selling you stuff from China that you don't need.
Re:How I think it all started, and more (Score:4, Insightful)
I think a lot of the lack of R&D goes back to decisions made many years ago by the government. At one point all employee salaries regardless of how outrageous they were were a deductible expense. Congress decided they wanted to tax high salaried people. Therefore companies found ways around those laws. In comes stock bonuses and stock options. The problem with that is that a highly paid employee (most likely a decision maker) will do what is best for them, which is kick up the stock price so that they get higher effective pay. Easy way to do that, kill long term R&D.
In a capitalistic society management (decision makers or highly paid employees) serves the interest of the stockholders... And most stockholders want money on a short term... Not long term risky investments...
I doubt higher taxes on high incomes has much to do with this...
The solution is not necessarily communism... - But government investments can be a part of the solution... subsidizing certain industries might be an idea too... In Denmark the government subsidized every watt produced using wind energy, thus driving research in this area... In Germany it was solar energy...
Re:Greentech! (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, that's moderately insightful. There's a persistent stereotype that "green" meaning a step backward in technology, but, realistically, it's exactly the opposite-- true green means high technology.
The true story is that we are far underutilizing the technology we have. We could have more small, local generation of power from wind and solar; the wind stuff can be made from recycled materials, and solar panels were able to pay back the energy cost of their production in less than a decade back in the seventies. It could probably never fill all demand, but we already use multiple forms of power.
Re:No. (Score:1, Insightful)
no its bureaucratic. "Ph.D level education" != holding a PhD.
Re:Surprising (Score:5, Insightful)
Forget the Wall Street Journal. This needs to resonant with the Dicks and Janes that walk main street USA. The US is racking up record deficits and debts, a huge chunk of which is borrowed from foreigners. It's economy is still reliant on important strategic resources like oil. There is only so long it can go on doing this. At some point, the US must produce goods and services for the global marketplace that are competitive enough to generate the tax base to not only stem future deficits, but also pay down some of the accrued debt. When I put what this article has to say together with some of the more recent studies on US literacy and numeracy, the picture is pretty scary. There is some life to the US economy right now, but what happens when all the stimulus money dries up, and foreign investors realize that US T-Bills, savings bonds, and even US currency potentially isn't worth the paper it is written on? The financial turmoil of the last 12 months is going to look like a cakewalk then.
Re:It's not the business model that is broken. (Score:5, Insightful)
A regulated market that prohibits companies from buying each other out when there are only a few players left, protection from lawyer attack and price undercutting for new players entering an established market and anti-monopoly/anti-cartel legislation to round it off.
Re:No. (Score:1, Insightful)
That's too simple of an answer. Sure, there aren't a whole lot of science PhDs; but there's very little funding as well. Today most professors spend most of their time finding funding, indeed, that seems to be their main job. And there's another big problem. I have a degree. I'm more than employable, I get unsolicited job offers. But I decided to be a PhD student. I make, in the US, less as a PhD student than unemployment, and less than a PhD student in China. Never mind comparing to the 4-6x salary I could have in industry. Never mind that it's harder work and longer hours.
So if you really want more PhDs and more research, the answer is twofold. Pay better, and stop making people that should be doing research spend most of their time going around trying to get funding.
Re:Individual (Score:5, Insightful)
deny the organization who discovered it the fruits of their labor
Call it anecdote, but I find that the people most likely to use the phrase "fruits of ... labor" tend to be the people least likely to have ever performed an hour of true hard labor in their lives.
Like the Rugged Individualist(TM) who goes on and on about how he shouldn't pay taxes and should be able to keep the "fruits of his labor" when it turns out he resets people's passwords and reboots servers for a living.
Who mod'ed that "Interesting"? (Score:4, Insightful)
Pirate Bay is more about copyright. Not too many people go to Pirate Bay to find a torrent of the latest metallurgical advancements.
That depends upon what you mean by "recoup". Are you talking 1=1 where they make back the money they spent only on that project? Or 10x the money? or 100x the money? or where they can keep turning a profit on that research forever just because they were the first ones to get it filed?
No. The "hostile environment" for real research is from patent trolls.
The "hostile environment" for copyright is from one company that wants to keep turning a profit off of a cartoon of a mouse.
Just look at the salaries that are paid in those industries. And the multi-million dollar awards given them by the courts.
Basic research won't repair any economy! (Score:2, Insightful)
The Quote "Basic research can repair the broken US business model [...]" is completely wrong.
For example: Astronomy
Astronomy is basic research. There are alot of politicians and institutions that think "why wasting time and money in astronomy? They just watch stars and cost alot of money, while social problems are growing such as poverty or unemployement". So they cut the funds and or may invest it in another projects which seem to be lucrative in a short-term. That is the wrong way!
Basic research IS very important to the mankind. Another example: the experimental proof of the Bose-Einstein-Condensate. It's been postulated by Bose in 1920's and discovered in 1995. What is the practical use of it? Currently, there is none. But it's a proof to our theories which is very valuable.
Basic research is very important but it's not meant to repair an economy or broken business models. The economy can only be repaired by making right decisions in the politics, by investing money in R&D, investing ALOT of money in public and academic education and of course protecting the environment.
The author from BW took some popular examples but also take mine into consideration. What if your company/country/whatever spends billions of dollars to create a B-E-C and in the end there is no monetary profit from it? It's all about short-term profits, isn't it?
Re:It's not the business model that is broken. (Score:2, Insightful)
Actually if you add SS, Medicare, Medicaid,
Unemployment and Welfare, Housing and Urban Development, and Health and Human Services
Uhhm No Unemployment is paid through unemployment insurance that employers pay to the government.
The higher your rate of claims against you the higher your rates will be.
Unemployment insurance is a TAX paid by employers, no different than any of the other taxes they pay. I'm not understanding your point in singling that out, as each of those other things in his list are also specific taxes that the government collects to fund those systems. When calculating the government's budget, the add all those sources together for a single statistic, even if the funds are separately collected, accounted and dispensed.
Unemployment in his list is exactly the same as everything else in his list. While medicaid/care are calculated against all costs/claims from beneficiaries, the rates (that we all pay, beneficiaries and otherwise) still rise as claims do.
Re:It's not the business model that is broken. (Score:5, Insightful)
I submit that both are broken and for the same reason: They want to have their cakes and eat them too.
Business relies heavily on societal infrastructure for end profits, but thinks that contributing to the support and development of the infrastructure is a horrible injustice inflicted upon them: You'll never, ever find a business which factors in the infrastructure items they depend upon because they are assumed to be there to be used, much like mana from heaven. Someone else is expected to put all the various infrastructure elements in place and maintain them so business can reap profits, but what happens when business controls most of the wealth of the society? Who then plans, builds and maintains the infrastructure items necessary for business to function? No one.
America's wealth owners would re-read the children's classic "The Little Red Hen" and throw Ayn Rand in the trash if they're really interested in seeing the U.S. do well in the future.
Re:Want to get more basic research? (Score:3, Insightful)
I am really tired of hearing whining about how exorbitant athletes' (et al.) salaries are. For crying out loud, it's not as though there's a government panel that decides how much they are paid and for what reasons. They're paid what they are for the simple reason that people pay a lot of money (or in the specific case of sports, a lot of people pay a small amount of money) to watch them do what they do. That's the value they're creating. You could certainly argue that basic research "deserves" more money, but at the end of the day, all you're really arguing is that the masses are too stupid to invest in those things that you say are "good" for them. Well, maybe you're right; maybe you're not. And likelier, you're both right and wrong, because "good" is a very difficult if not impossible thing to determine, because it's itself subjective to a large degree.
In any event, it's still their money to invest as they wish, right? So, you say, let them waste their money on the lottery and sports and alcohol, and the government will fund those projects that you deem worthy. But here's the problem with that: the money the government spends doesn't just appear magically--it's taken from people, and someone (or a committee, or whatever) still has to make a subjective judgement call about the manner in which that money is spent. Frankly, I have little confidence that such a scheme would work, even with the lowest reasonable hope for success.
Please don't misunderstand me. I'm not saying that I'm opposed to basic research--far from it. It's critical. Indeed, it's the only reason that we enjoy the standard of living we do; further, our vast knowledge of the physical world is important for its own sake. But whining for more dollars to be funneled from rich folks' pockets into whatever project the government body in charge of spending their money thinks is worthwhile this week isn't the way to encourage it.
Re:Surprising (Score:5, Insightful)
False dichotomy AND strawman in two sentences.
I am old enough to remember when this country was under a real external threat (thermonuclear attack) and our response was to encourage creativity, research and learning to outproduce the "other side". Now we have a new set of problems on the horizon and we need to adjust our basic priorities: to include basic research as a source of economic competitiveness.
Unfortunately significant advances generally upset the status quo. Recently Movement Conservatives seem afraid to lose the security of the existing status quo.
For example, I cite the power of extractive and fossil energy interests in discouraging broad funding of research in distributed and/or alternative energy sources over the last 40 years. They roll out their conservative protectors, screaming "socialism!" every time anyone brings up economic opportunity cost of preserving access to oil by military means, or the strategic loss of control of economic production due to the contribution of petroleum-based energy costs as a major part of our trade deficit. These factors affect our national security in significant ways, but fail because they threaten entrenched and very very wealthy interests.
I have been watching as a working software engineer during the last 33 years. Fear of a future that does not look like the past has caused significant delays in many areas of research and development. I hope it's possible to recover.
Globalization changed the rules (Score:3, Insightful)
Today, if a research organization creates something new and exciting, it can generally be duplicated in China in less than a year - often three weeks or so. This eliminates any possibility of the "innovator" reaping any sort of reward for their efforts. What company wants to spend money only to hand a gift over to someone in China?
Today one example is DVD players. We have cheap DVD players because the patent licensing is not being enforced. The license fee per DVD player is $5, which would translate to around $50 at the retail level. There are plenty of $29.99 DVD players being brought into the US for which no license fee was ever paid. And this is just one example I personally know about. There are thousands more.
So while 50 years ago (or even 30) you could create something new and develop a product based on it. This product would be sold and the developer would get paid. Sometimes, for the right product, it might be "knocked off" in China but the cost differentials were not as they are today. So you could still sell the "original" product for a reasonable price.
Today, between the Internet making it all about lowest price, customs officials looking the other way as far as patent licensing is concerned and labor costs skyrocketing developing a product in the US or Western Europe is pointless - as is the R&D behind it. Why would anyone spend the money on R&D when the fruits of their labor is going to be taken by a foreign operator?
Short answer is, this isn't going to get fixed anytime soon. R&D is dead and buried. We will eventually have some R&D again, but not until the current globalization situation sorts itself out.
Re:Combination of Factors (Score:1, Insightful)
Absolute bullshit. The reason we're in the shitter is the extreme focus by business "leaders" on quarterly numbers. R&D of any stripe only detracts from those numbers and therefore gets reamed because of the completely misguided and braindead focus on "maximizing shareholder value".
Face it, the single biggest problem US business face is their own management.
Re:It's not the business model that is broken. (Score:4, Insightful)
... and the ugliest girl was the prettiest of them all. By definition, if they screwed up the most - or even quite a bit - then they are not the best and the brightest. I think you meant that the people whom many mistakenly considered to be the best and the brightest turned out not to be so great or bright after all.
Its the ideological mind set that is broken (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, so many in business and politics don't see their role as American citizens as more important than their making money for personal gain. The accumulation of wealth has become perceived as valuable than personal sacrifice for the common good. To many, the entire concept of collective government is viewed as the problem not the solution.
Driven by self-serving market forces, its an attitude that has permeated nearly every aspect of our culture. Americans today by and large do not see the government budget as their money, rather they see it as someone else's money. This arises in large part because they continue to elect representatives, who represent corporate interests rather than their own. The decline of our political culture (the decline of our economy and scientific infrastructure are merely byproducts) has reached the point that corporations, most obviously in the area of health care, now actually buy politicians and market their own political agendas to keep the gravy flowing and the current system in place, craftily selling them to the foolish, who then proceed to attack their own self-interest. Corporations and corporate media in our "free" markets tout the evils of socialism and brand any collective action for the common good that may affect their self-interest "socialism". The short-sighted and the ideological rigid (conservative) are more than eager to follow their lead.
Sure, the lip service of cheap patriotism is easily paid, but you can count the number who are ultimately willing to pay either higher prices or more taxes for the "greater good" in single digits. The willingness of many to see any kind of collective activity as a sign of "socialism" only emphasizes that the kind of initiative the writer is talking about will more likely take place elsewhere, China, India, Europe, Japan, Korea, Canada, where they more readily accept and recognize that economic and social realities do not come in easily pigeonholed extremes that can be painted black or white. The transition and acceleration of societies more adept at handling and developing collective action other than our own has been picking up steam over the past few decades, particularly in the biosciences where much of the future lies. However, this is not necessarily a bad thing as the collective effort becomes globally rather than nationally oriented.
Thank conservative think tanks. (Score:3, Insightful)
There are liberal think tank, however, they are mostly concerned with environmentalism and social justice. As such, they don't get a pinch of the funding as CTTs.
Re:YES I CAN! (Score:5, Insightful)
It's interesting there where you try to claim that inferior, higher priced forms of energy are more efficient. If they were more efficient, why wouldn't they be less expensive than fossil fuels? Then we'd just switch to them because they're cheaper -- rather than being forced against our will to pay extra for them and to subsidize them.
Or did you mean "more efficient" at delivering subsidies and windfall profits into the hands of the politically-connected ruling class at the expense of the average American?
Re:Greentech! (Score:3, Insightful)
Most assessments of microgeneration I've seen show that it's inefficient...
Wind energy scales well to large sizes, which means it's a poor choice at small sizes-- in fact, this link [lowtechmagazine.com] was on slashdot a few months ago.
No, Completely Wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
Much regulation is either WRONG, or INADAQUATELY ENFORCED, particularly in the finance sector, eg:
(a) Naked Shorts
(b) Incorrect MARK TO MARKET
(c) Capital Adaquacy
(d) Insure un-owned asset
(e) Late transaction settlement
you need the above list fixed before the next implosion or down turn.
Re:Greentech! (Score:3, Insightful)
We seem to be talking about different things. I am saying that "green" concepts are in fact high tech, while you are talking about the people who embrace green energy. I have little interest, actually, in your views about environmentalists, since I see no reason to think that you've ever actually talked to one in the current decade, or, at least, no reason to believe that you actually listened to what they might have said.
So let me repeat what I said. Green energy is inherently high technology, despite stereotypes, and family-farms and kerosene lanterns won't cut it in the 21st century.
Re:Surprising (Score:3, Insightful)
The whole point of the article was that no group has the incentives necessary to make what needs to happen, happen. Relying on the free market is simply going to mean that some other player with either low wages or a willingness to fund research
Re:Greentech! (Score:3, Insightful)
We seem to be talking about different things. I am saying that "green" concepts are in fact high tech, while you are talking about the people who embrace green energy.
Fair enough.
I have little interest, actually, in your views about environmentalists, since I see no reason to think that you've ever actually talked to one in the current decade,
Greenpeace assaults me on the sidewalk every day with their anti-nuclear message. Unless I'm living in some kind of time-warp, they still have the views I pointed out in my post, and are extremely loud and abrasive about them.
or, at least, no reason to believe that you actually listened to what they might have said.
I've listened to enough to know that they're doing much more to oppose clean energy then support it.
So let me repeat what I said. Green energy is inherently high technology, despite stereotypes, and family-farms and kerosene lanterns won't cut it in the 21st century.
I agree with you entirely. Most environmentalists do not.
Re:Want to get more basic research? (Score:5, Insightful)
Umm. I don't think finding people to do R&D is the issue. It is funding the R&D that is an issue. How do you justify paying for R&D as an investment as what normally happends with R&D is you spend a lot of money for a new Idea. Now with that Idea the following can Happen...
1. You Create a new product then in a few months 3rd party knock offs come up as they are cheaper start to chew away your market share. Your company image looks like a snotty over priced greedy company. Although the reason the competition is cheaper is that they didn't spend millions in R&D.
2. You Create a new product but it is to far ahead of its time. Thus fails miserably. Being so far ahead of its time any minor glitch is magnified as the culture isn't ready to take such tradeoffs. You loose money from the product and your reputation is lowered as people who didn't like the tradeoff will assume you are out of touch with what they want.
3. You Create a new Idea you didn't think it was worth while. Give/Sell it to an other company and they make huge amounts of money from it. And you just get mocked for not having enough foresight.
4. You Create a new idea you don't think it is worth while but you hold on to the rights. Someone want to use it but you say now and you look like a patent troll.
5. You put money in an Idea and it was not worth while but you try to market it. You loose money
6. You put money in an idea and not worth while and do nothing. You still loose the money for the R&D.
Oddly enough Monopolies or near monopolies really help large scale R&D while a world of open competition will prevent such large scale R&D and only allow for incremental changes. But to say you can't find people to do R&D i would say would be false. A lot of people would prefer to do R&D even if it paid less.
Re:Where Have You Gone, Bell Labs? (Score:1, Insightful)
No, mostly they are at universities or in other jobs.
Something over 90% of the research staff at Bell Labs was laid off between 2001 and 2005. Last I heard, there were about 6 guys still doing basic research there.
Re:Surprising (Score:4, Insightful)
Um...NSF? (Score:3, Insightful)
Not one mention of the National Science Foundation which pumps billions of dollars into basic science research per year......
Another case: HP (Score:5, Insightful)
It would indeed have been difficult for anyone to screw things up as badly as Fiorina; that does take real talent. When Fiorina came on board, she made it clear that she did not like the company of which she had just taken control. So she methodically set about destroying the "old" HP. The first thing she did was a masterful piece of irony: she ordered that the word "Invent" would become part of the HP logo. Evidently, she thought that "branding" is all that matters; hype can be substituted for the real thing, and nobody will notice. I guess she was right.
This is not just about one bad person; it is a pattern. I think that what has happened is that the corporate managerial and financial class (and it is a sort of ruling class, in the old sense of class struggle) have become destructive parasites that suck the wealth out of our common economy, and transfer it to their own wallets. They destroy things that have value—like a creative engineering corporation—and leave behind an empty husk that only pretends to do what the old corporation actually did: invent.
Re:Surprising (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't have access to the soviet leadership during the 1961-1969 time frame, so I cannot ssay for certain what they were thinking.
I am mostly responding to the fact that all the children in our schools (Pittsburgh) were issued dogtags, and the reason given was that they might be necessary in case of "emergency".
One would hope that nobody in either government was *that* stupid. But at the time all this was happening, the second world war was only 16-23 years in the past, the memory of all-out war was much more recent in people's minds at the time, and the common experience, again from WWII that war could be both necessary and decisive.
And OF COURSE I watched Wargames, in a first-run theater when it came out. I credit that movie, and many like it, for an important shift in public attitude about what "thermonuclear war" meant. Before that movie and the others like it, I believe that most people failed to understand just how crispy their world would get until it was dramatized for them.
So we could *hope* that it would not happen, but from everything I saw then and for many years afterward, I saw way too little evidence that the extremity of war in the nuclear age was well enough understood to serve as a real deterrent.
Re:It's not the business model that is broken. (Score:2, Insightful)
Granted, most of the qualifying activities are not basic research but instead specific process improvements or cost reductions for existing products.
Still, seems to be a start.
Regardless, I don't know whether it was the tax structure or the changing participation of investors in the stock market that had a worse effect. I took a history class on this in school. The course was mostly focusing on the actual history and accomplishments of 'industrial R&D', but we did discuss factors leading up to the death of it in the last 20-30 years. Part of it was the end of the cold war...lots of things were developed in secret to beat the Russkies. Corning, for example, made some extraordinary developments in glass production just to make better camera lenses for the U2.
A bigger bit was the increased trading volume and shorter share retention times in the stock market. If shares are traded on the basis of daily fluctuations and not on a long-term interest in the company. Stocks used to be purchased for a profit as well as to gain a hand in steering the course of a corporation. This latter aspect seems to have disappeared from the public interest who hope for a bit higher return on their 401k (which have turned out so great for everyone the past year or two). Companies were rewarded for increasing their stock value on a daily or weekly basis, or paying dividends rather than reinvesting in research.
Re:Another case: HP (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course HP did just recently have a kind of large and significant general scientific breakthrough [wikipedia.org] but hey, its just marketing right?
I'm not coming down on your rant, I'm sure you are right, but its not quite all black and white. My take on all this is these very large and successful research laboratories sunk huge amounts of research dollars into what became other people's successes. They are doing what they need to do as businesses: make money. My point is that this sort of ground breaking research should happen in the public realm, it makes more sense to me that everyone share the costs of scientific advancement through tax dollars. And thus universities and other public research institutes should have funding ramped up in a really big way. It makes economic sense from my point of view.
Re:Want to get more basic research? (Score:4, Insightful)
Basic science research != product R&D.
If you don't understand the difference, you're probably part of the problem in why we aren't doing it.
The transistor is probably the best example, but there's plenty of others. It didn't make AT&T the richest company or most powerful company on the planet, but it changed our world. And that change was mostly led by American companies, so even though AT&T didn't reap huge rewards (though they have done quite nicely for themselves up until the dot com bubble burst -- or should I say till they gutted Bell Labs which was pre-bubble) we as a society did.
Basic science research leads to product R&D, but it does so way down the road. Corporate America (and the public at large, since the public at large is science-stupid) has lost the will to go there because of wall street and the public demand for "more profits now!" Does all basic science pay out? Heck no. Will it pay out in 10 years? Maybe. When it does pay out it can be huge. Figure the impact 50 to 60 years down the line by counting the household brands tied to the transistor: Microsoft and Dell come quickly to mind as huge companies built off that research. I'd put IBM, HP, Google, Yahoo and lots of others in the same boat, but nobody says huge and wouldn't exist without the transistor like MS and Dell.
Re:Want to get more basic research? (Score:5, Insightful)
When it does pay out it can be huge.
What the BW article misses is that even a 'huge pay out' isn't going to translate into huge numbers of jobs. In fact, the whole purpose of most 'breakthroughs' is to reduce the amount of human labour needed to reach desirable goals.
There aren't going to be any breakthroughs that create industrial jobs; robots and Chinese do that now. There aren't going to be any breakthroughs that create information work; computers do that now. Nanotech, biotech, AI tech, they're not going to create a demand for labour, they're going to reduce it.
Of course, that may seem like a problem if one is stuck in the belief that 'jobs' are desirable in themselves. They're not, of course, jobs are what you don't want to do. The whole point of the free market economy is to reduce the amount of undesirable work needed to produce the desirable wealth; the ideal state and end-game of economy would be that no more work would need to be undertaken to obtain any particular expression of desire: the economy where all undesirable work is fully automated. The fact that jobs are disappearing means that we're approaching the goal; production capacity starts to outpace demand (in relation to the value of free time).
The fact that we have an uneven distribution of the actual labour that does still need to be accomplished, now, that is a different thing. But the problem that some sit on their asses while others work too much isn't productively solved by trying to find pointless work for the ones sitting on their asses, but by biting the bullet and doing some basic science research in the field of economics and working out how to play out the end of the era of scarcity.