4 ms·

The Future Postponed – Declining Investment in Basic Research [pdf]

christianbryant 11y ago
This is a brilliant read. On cybersecurity: "One fundamental cause of cyber insecurity is core weaknesses in the architecture of most current computer systems that are, in effect, a historical legacy. These architectures have their roots in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s when computers were roughly 10,000 times slower than today’s processors and had much smaller memories. At that time, nothing mattered as much as squeezing out a bit more performance and so enforcing certain key safety properties (having to do with the way in which access to computer memory is controlled and the ability of operating systems to differentiate among different types of instructions) were deemed to be of lesser importance."
- Animats 11y ago
  Nah. There were more secure operating systems in the late 1970s and 1980s: IBM VM, Wang's OS, KeyKos, Popek's kernel. Then came UC Berkeley.
  - christianbryant 11y ago
    Ok, you've got me with IBM VM :-) But, I understand what they are getting at. In fact, the GNU/Linux love I am, I actually subscribe to Jaron Lanier's view that we are too attached to our long-held ideas of what computers and operating systems need to be...
- MichaelGG 11y ago
  ... This still holds true today and is one of the main reasons people are using things like C++. If performance was simply not an issue, far less people would try to avoid garbage collection, bounds checks everywhere, etc.
yummyfajitas 11y ago
This article is being a bit disingenuous and the title is simply misleading. The uneducated reader might come away with the mistaken impression that science funding has been reduced. This incorrect idea is further reinforced with the graph of "Outlays as share of total federal budget". Some other graphs from the same source: http://www.aaas.org/sites/default/files/DefNon_0.jpg http://www.aaas.org/sites/default/files/DefNon_0.jpg http://www.aaas.org/sites/default/files/FunctionNON_0.jpg http://www.aaas.org/sites/default/files/FunctionNON_0.jpg A better title: "The research budget is growing, but the federal government is growing faster."
- christianbryant 11y ago
  You're not wrong about the slight bloat in the marketing here, but I wouldn't say the article is disingenuous. In fact, I think the authors clearly wanted to pull in readers, and once in, offer heart-felt examinations of multiple disciplines and the state they are in currently, good and bad. Remember, this is a report of the _innovation_ deficit, not funding. Through examination of the political and social ecosystems driving and holding back each discipline, and how each one fits within the priorities of our government, we see where innovation is lacking and potentially why.
- seanmcdirmid 11y ago
  The federal budget is pretty much a function of inflation + population and economic growth. Since 1960, the budget has hovered between 30 and 40% of GDP. The federal government isn't really growing so much as the country and world are, and we should expect basic research to keep up with that growth.
  - yummyfajitas 11y ago
    Real federal expenditures per capita have grown, so it's not merely population growth. https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?chart_type=line&recession_bars=on&log_scales=&bgcolor=%23e1e9f0&graph_bgcolor=%23ffffff&fo=verdana&ts=12&tts=12&txtcolor=%23444444&show_legend=yes&show_axis_titles=yes&drp=0&cosd=1947-01-01&coed=2014-10-01&width=670&height=445&stacking=&range=&mode=fred&id=GCEC96_POP&transformation=lin&nd=&ost=-99999&oet=99999&lsv=&lev=&scale=left&line_color=%234572a7&line_style=solid&lw=2&mark_type=none&mw=1&mma=0&fml=a&fgst=lin&fgsnd=2007-12-01&fq=Quarterly&fam=avg&vintage_date=&revision_date= https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?chart_type=line... This means that the government is doing more stuff per person. There is no reason to expect basic research funding or other types of funding to track either GDP growth or population growth. Population may double, but that doesn't mean there are twice as many good hypothesis to test. Once you've achieved economies of scale, programs like basic research should grow sublinearly.

This is a brilliant read. On cybersecurity: "One fundamental cause of cyber insecurity is core weaknesses in the architecture of most current computer systems that are, in effect, a historical legacy. These architectures have their roots in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s when computers were roughly 10,000 times slower than today’s processors and had much smaller memories. At that time, nothing mattered as much as squeezing out a bit more performance and so enforcing certain key safety properties (having to do with the way in which access to computer memory is controlled and the ability of operating systems to differentiate among different types of instructions) were deemed to be of lesser importance."

Animats 11y ago
Nah. There were more secure operating systems in the late 1970s and 1980s: IBM VM, Wang's OS, KeyKos, Popek's kernel. Then came UC Berkeley.
- christianbryant 11y ago
  Ok, you've got me with IBM VM :-) But, I understand what they are getting at. In fact, the GNU/Linux love I am, I actually subscribe to Jaron Lanier's view that we are too attached to our long-held ideas of what computers and operating systems need to be...
MichaelGG 11y ago
... This still holds true today and is one of the main reasons people are using things like C++. If performance was simply not an issue, far less people would try to avoid garbage collection, bounds checks everywhere, etc.

yummyfajitas 11y ago

This article is being a bit disingenuous and the title is simply misleading. The uneducated reader might come away with the mistaken impression that science funding has been reduced. This incorrect idea is further reinforced with the graph of "Outlays as share of total federal budget". Some other graphs from the same source: http://www.aaas.org/sites/default/files/DefNon_0.jpg http://www.aaas.org/sites/default/files/DefNon_0.jpg http://www.aaas.org/sites/default/files/FunctionNON_0.jpg http://www.aaas.org/sites/default/files/FunctionNON_0.jpg A better title: "The research budget is growing, but the federal government is growing faster."

christianbryant 11y ago
You're not wrong about the slight bloat in the marketing here, but I wouldn't say the article is disingenuous. In fact, I think the authors clearly wanted to pull in readers, and once in, offer heart-felt examinations of multiple disciplines and the state they are in currently, good and bad. Remember, this is a report of the _innovation_ deficit, not funding. Through examination of the political and social ecosystems driving and holding back each discipline, and how each one fits within the priorities of our government, we see where innovation is lacking and potentially why.
seanmcdirmid 11y ago
The federal budget is pretty much a function of inflation + population and economic growth. Since 1960, the budget has hovered between 30 and 40% of GDP. The federal government isn't really growing so much as the country and world are, and we should expect basic research to keep up with that growth.
- yummyfajitas 11y ago
  Real federal expenditures per capita have grown, so it's not merely population growth. https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?chart_type=line&recession_bars=on&log_scales=&bgcolor=%23e1e9f0&graph_bgcolor=%23ffffff&fo=verdana&ts=12&tts=12&txtcolor=%23444444&show_legend=yes&show_axis_titles=yes&drp=0&cosd=1947-01-01&coed=2014-10-01&width=670&height=445&stacking=&range=&mode=fred&id=GCEC96_POP&transformation=lin&nd=&ost=-99999&oet=99999&lsv=&lev=&scale=left&line_color=%234572a7&line_style=solid&lw=2&mark_type=none&mw=1&mma=0&fml=a&fgst=lin&fgsnd=2007-12-01&fq=Quarterly&fam=avg&vintage_date=&revision_date= https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?chart_type=line... This means that the government is doing more stuff per person. There is no reason to expect basic research funding or other types of funding to track either GDP growth or population growth. Population may double, but that doesn't mean there are twice as many good hypothesis to test. Once you've achieved economies of scale, programs like basic research should grow sublinearly.