3 ms·
Or, 0.8% of the NIH's annual funding for curing heart disease. That's nice, but the tech press is doing is pretty poor job conveying the overall role of public
by abalone 11y ago
Or, 0.8% of the NIH's annual funding for curing heart disease.
That's nice, but the tech press is doing is pretty poor job conveying the overall role of public vs private funding in basic science research. Same issue came up around YC Research.
It's true that Google's approach is to hand more money to one team instead of spreading it among many investigators. But the overall tone of the article is there are "swings" in funding and private companies are stepping in with "jackpot" grants to save the day. If you didn't read closely you might even think public funding is drying up and Silicon Valley private investors are the future of core science research.
This fundamentally and completely confuses how core science research happens and in fact how Silicon Valley itself was created and functions today (with respect to core tech research through agencies like DARPA as well as medical science via NIH). Collaboration with the private sector is an important piece of that but this one figure puts it in perspective: The annual NIH budget for heart research alone is $1.2 billion. Bottom line, you can still thank Uncle Sam and taxpayers for most major research.
- Fomite 11y agoThat was my first thought. "Oh, this'll be a really nice handful of R01 style grants..."
- melted 11y agoTake it for what it is: a cheap way to score PR points. Most Google "moonshot" projects not related to ads fall into this category. Fucking internet in Africa from self driving robotic balloons.
- buyx 11y agoInternet in Africa from balloons would solve many issues. Mobile internet has far more penetration than fixed-line broadband because of infrastructure challenges. Providing another means of low-cost wireless connectivity to millions of people would be a powerful enabler, and drive costs down. I constantly find myself surprised by how quickly Africans, who are pretty much written off by most people, adapt to new technologies.
- melted 11y agoPolio, malaria, sanitation, nutrition should come first. A-la the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. On the priority list for those people getting showered with ads is somewhere towards the bottom. This whole situation very much reminds me of the scene from The Fifth Element where the deaf guy throws the protagonist a couple of billiard balls instead of a gun.
- dllthomas 11y agoPolio, malaria, sanitation, and nutrition are far more important, first order. However, improving communications (and I don't know whether self driving robotic internet balloons is the best way to do that) might reasonably make it quite a bit easier to address those.