The fact that we are having this conversation across time and space shows the power of Lick's "Intergalactic Computer Network". We have reasons to be optimistic

The fact that we are having this conversation across time and space shows the power of Lick's "Intergalactic Computer Network". We have reasons to be optimistic. On the other hand, on top of the computer hardware/software communication layers where this conversation takes place, there is a profound layer that we seem to take for granted and not consciously aware of (like fish in the water), i.e., written language composed and consumed by real human being (English in this case). To communicate effectively with this distributed (non-local in space) and asynchronous (non-local in time) layer, we need more contexts other than the words themselves. In Rob Pike's Bell Labs and Alan Kay's bean-bag-chaired PARC, local synchronous face-to-face communication would be much more effective because the audience were from the same background and shared the same context. Let's take a look at the contexts of Bret Victor's blog post "Some excerpts from recent Alan Kay emails". These are excerpts of private written communication (emails) between Alan Kay and Bret Victor. We could imagine what Alan had in mind when he wrote those emails, or what Bret had in mind when he read them, further more, why Bret made those excerpts and posted them on his blog. However, since we were neither Bret nor Alan, we can only read them within the constraint of our own contexts. We can only guess what message Bret wanted to send with his blog and we are not even sure we (HN community) are his intended audience. I am sure there are some YC funders reading this and the fact that we don't see any of them making a statement here shows that they are also under the constraint of their contexts. So I guess the challenges and solutions to funding of research lie upon these contexts as well. It is all about pink and blue planes.