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Open contests would be meaningless without vast financial backing to launch those world-changing projects. And the contributing party would want some kind of fi
by fractallyte 12y ago
Open contests would be meaningless without vast financial backing to launch those world-changing projects. And the contributing party would want some kind of financial reward.
Never going to happen, for a truly innovative idea, because the risks are too high.
The world needs a benevolent Bell Labs type of institution, with commercial intelligence, that channels profits back into its growth (like Amazon). It should employ tens of thousands of scientists - engaged in 'blue sky' research - and aim to solve problems that are currently considered 'too big'. The usual stuff, like climate change, clean energy production, and political reform (backed by hard political science).
- smt88 12y agoThink about NASA. They created dozens of technologies that were then released to the public and have become multi-billion dollar industries, and many of those were not expected to have commercial value. Of course, that's with a massive budget. Examples of smaller budgets Linux, the World Wide Web, and probably a thousand more obvious things that I'm not thinking of. It takes these things a long time to get off the ground, but there are tons of companies that are making money off of community projects.
- fractallyte 12y agoThe bureaucracy at NASA is stifling. Slicing up a relatively small budget (compared to spending on finance, defense, and everything other than science) means that the majority of dream research is simply not undertaken. If the barriers to funding were (sensibly) removed, academia, and institutions like NASA, would flourish - and we'd see huge leaps forward for humanity.