4 ms·

The secret hero of that time was the US government. I’m not talking about the MIC, which is still quite robust and more bad than good. I am speaking more broadl

The secret hero of that time was the US government. I’m not talking about the MIC, which is still quite robust and more bad than good. I am speaking more broadly. If you had a practical PhD and were willing to show up at a place at 9:00, you could get a solid upper middle class job with the Feds where you couldn’t get fired unless you broke the law. The government also has always kept academia afloat. It is a privilege afforded to professors to believe they do not work for the state, but they do. Great government and academic jobs forced companies to create these labs where it was better to hire great people and “lose” some hours to them doing whatever they want (which was still often profitable enough) than have zero great people. Can you imagine Claude Shannon putting up with the stuff software engineers deal with today? The other main change is that how to run big companies has been figured out well enough that “zero great people” is no longer a real survival issue for companies. In the 1970s you needed a research level of talent but most companies today don’t.

linguae 2y ago
Something that just dawned on me is the downstream effects of United States’ policy regarding science during WWII and the Cold War. The Manhattan Project, NASA, the NSA and all of its contributions to mathematics and cryptography, ARPA, DARPA, and many other agencies and programs not only directly contributed to science, but they also helped form a scientific culture that affected not only government-ran and government-funded labs, but also private-sector labs, as people and ideas were exchanged throughout the years. It is a well-documented fact that Xerox PARC’s 1970’s culture was heavily influenced by ARPA’s 1960’s culture. One of the things that has changed since the 1990s is the ending of the Cold War. The federal government still has national laboratories, DARPA, NASA, the NSF, etc. However, the general culture has changed. It’s not that technology isn’t revered; far from it. It’s just that “stopping Hitler,” “beating the Soviets,” and grand visions for society have been replaced with visions of creating lucrative businesses. I don’t hear about the Oppenheimers and von Neumanns of today’s world, but I hear plenty about Elon Musk and Sam Altman, not to disrespect what they have done (especially with the adoption of EVs and generative AI, respectively), but the latter names are successful businessmen, while the former names are successful scientists. I don’t know what government labs are like, but I know that academia these days have high publication and fundraising pressures that inhibit curiosity-driven research, and I also know that industry these days is beholden to short-term results and pleasing shareholders, sometimes at the expense of the long-term and of society at large.
- dartos 2y ago
  > successful businessmen, while the former names are successful scientists We’ve seen this before with Thomas Edison.
- aguaviva 2y ago
  I don’t hear about the Oppenheimers and von Neumanns of today’s world Sadder still is the underlying situaiton behind this: the fact that there's nothing of even remotely comparable significance happening in the public sphere for such minds to devote themselves to, as those man did. Even though the current civilization risk if anything significantly greater than in their time.
  - lotsofpulp 2y ago
    I feel like having access to instant high definition video communication and to the world’s repository of text, audio, and video information at a moment’s notice from a device in your pocket is of comparable, if not more, significance. These innovations in LEDs, battery technology, low power high performance microchips with features measured in number of atoms is extraordinary, and seemingly taken for granted. Then we also have medicines that can even bend one’s desire to over eat or even drink alcohol, not to mention better vaccines, cancer therapies, and so on and so forth.
    - phtrivier 2y ago
      And the smartphone is making sure you'll get plenty of access to the people who will prevent you from taking the vaccines or the cancer therapies (which, sadly, have _not_ been progressing as much as we would need.)
      - Spooky23 2y ago
        Google immunotherapy bro. Vaccines are in a golden age, except political assholes are stoking ignorance and rejection. In fact the two are advancing together. Bespoke vaccines for your cancer in in trial now.
phtrivier 2y ago
Yup. Silicon Valley would not exist without large government spending. You can bet this spending is going to be among the fist things slashed by DOGE-lile efforts ("Scientists ? They're just liberal elites wasting our hard earned money researching vaccines that will change your dog's gender in order to feed it to communist immigrants.") I suppose I could be cheered up by the irony, but, not today.

linguae 2y ago

Something that just dawned on me is the downstream effects of United States’ policy regarding science during WWII and the Cold War. The Manhattan Project, NASA, the NSA and all of its contributions to mathematics and cryptography, ARPA, DARPA, and many other agencies and programs not only directly contributed to science, but they also helped form a scientific culture that affected not only government-ran and government-funded labs, but also private-sector labs, as people and ideas were exchanged throughout the years. It is a well-documented fact that Xerox PARC’s 1970’s culture was heavily influenced by ARPA’s 1960’s culture. One of the things that has changed since the 1990s is the ending of the Cold War. The federal government still has national laboratories, DARPA, NASA, the NSF, etc. However, the general culture has changed. It’s not that technology isn’t revered; far from it. It’s just that “stopping Hitler,” “beating the Soviets,” and grand visions for society have been replaced with visions of creating lucrative businesses. I don’t hear about the Oppenheimers and von Neumanns of today’s world, but I hear plenty about Elon Musk and Sam Altman, not to disrespect what they have done (especially with the adoption of EVs and generative AI, respectively), but the latter names are successful businessmen, while the former names are successful scientists. I don’t know what government labs are like, but I know that academia these days have high publication and fundraising pressures that inhibit curiosity-driven research, and I also know that industry these days is beholden to short-term results and pleasing shareholders, sometimes at the expense of the long-term and of society at large.

dartos 2y ago
> successful businessmen, while the former names are successful scientists We’ve seen this before with Thomas Edison.
aguaviva 2y ago
I don’t hear about the Oppenheimers and von Neumanns of today’s world Sadder still is the underlying situaiton behind this: the fact that there's nothing of even remotely comparable significance happening in the public sphere for such minds to devote themselves to, as those man did. Even though the current civilization risk if anything significantly greater than in their time.
- lotsofpulp 2y ago
  I feel like having access to instant high definition video communication and to the world’s repository of text, audio, and video information at a moment’s notice from a device in your pocket is of comparable, if not more, significance. These innovations in LEDs, battery technology, low power high performance microchips with features measured in number of atoms is extraordinary, and seemingly taken for granted. Then we also have medicines that can even bend one’s desire to over eat or even drink alcohol, not to mention better vaccines, cancer therapies, and so on and so forth.
  - phtrivier 2y ago
    And the smartphone is making sure you'll get plenty of access to the people who will prevent you from taking the vaccines or the cancer therapies (which, sadly, have _not_ been progressing as much as we would need.)
    - Spooky23 2y ago
      Google immunotherapy bro. Vaccines are in a golden age, except political assholes are stoking ignorance and rejection. In fact the two are advancing together. Bespoke vaccines for your cancer in in trial now.

phtrivier 2y ago

Yup. Silicon Valley would not exist without large government spending. You can bet this spending is going to be among the fist things slashed by DOGE-lile efforts ("Scientists ? They're just liberal elites wasting our hard earned money researching vaccines that will change your dog's gender in order to feed it to communist immigrants.") I suppose I could be cheered up by the irony, but, not today.