3 ms·

> we don't have institutions at present that will allow people to explore the problem thoroughly What about academia? Academia is not a great environment for

• Uehreka 9y ago
  Bret Victor has been writing a lot recently about why the current academia can only churn out incremental improvements and not “fundamental research”. The problem with both startups and academia is the need to meet constant short term goals. Startups have limited runway and often investors who want to see a return. In academia, most funding comes from small National Science Foundation grants which are usually only enough to cover a fistful of months of research and require publishing a paper with novel findings. Many of the big breakthroughs of the mid-to-late 20th century came from long term fundamental research that was financed either through large public spending (ARPA, NASA) or large monolithic corporations who thought “meh, this’ll probably benefit us in the long term and we’re pretty flush with cash” (Xerox PARC and Bell Labs). Unless we can find ways to fund long term research (which btw will be high-risk, you have to be OK with getting no return for years or possibly ever) we will not be able to tackle large fundamental problems.
• scroot 9y ago
  I agree in principle, but the academy is not what it was in the 50s, 60s, and 70s when most computing breakthroughs took place. The whole funding model has changed. Short term thinking is the way of the world now.