> Instead of exploring tech without obvious business goals, business goals are so tightly enforced it's very hard to imagine what would happen if completely ope

> Instead of exploring tech without obvious business goals, business goals are so tightly enforced it's very hard to imagine what would happen if completely open exploration was allowed again. Similar could be said of science research and innovation in general. See this [1] HN submission on "When do ideas get easier to find? (freaktakes.substack.com)". Two concurrent current trends are taking place that militate against this kind of open exploration, James Burke-ian Connections-style "branching". The mania for revenue optimization, and the siren song of walled garden lock-in. Messy, "wasteful", "dangerous" open ecosystems deeply offend both of those sensibilities, but I think those sensibilities are flawed in not recognizing the intrinsic value of human cognition. It is the same kind of oversight I see when modern people assume their time distant ancestors were also cognitively distant. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31635962 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31635962