The article seems like it's conflating philosophy/social science analysis of the impact of technology with academic computer science. Would papers on "the socia

The article seems like it's conflating philosophy/social science analysis of the impact of technology with academic computer science. Would papers on "the social justice impact of the atom bomb" be reasonable physics conference topics? I... really don't think so. That's social science. I'm not saying it shouldn't be talked about, but it seems pretty weird to complain that hard science conferences don't have a lot of social science topics, and then blame that on capitalism. Academic computer scientists or physicists aren't even likely the best people to be researching that! I don't think the physicists in the USSR were primary attendees of social science or philosophy conferences either. Aside from that — and I suppose this part is capitalism's fault — where do they propose the money come from, if not the industry benefitting the most from the research? Big Tech has a lot of money, so conferences and research they sponsor gets a lot of funding. Banning tech companies, or restricting them, from funding research doesn't magically make other research get funded. If there was anywhere close to the ability to get funding from other sources, the article wouldn't exist. But that's where the money is now, and absent some societal upheaval and replacing capitalism with... ?... that's where you can get the money from. Yes yes government research projects, but realistically those were all DARPA projects, and having the military be the primary funding source for research isn't exactly getting rid of conflicts of interest when it comes to determining social impact of said research.