Ars Technica has an article up summarizing a book released in the national academy press about the current state of US research in physics. To sum up the summation report in a nutshell.... it SUCKS.
Of course just a personal nit... The national academy report costs 50 bucks for a PDF file. Your telling me that cost is justified? They let you read it online for free but charge 50bucks for a PDF download?
Anyway that is neither here nor there. One of the biggest recommendations coming from this report is the re-establishment of the 'blue-sky' research labs of the past. Such as Xerox, Bell-Labs, Westinghouse etc... What is left of these once famous labs is now beholden to the bottom line which is utter anathema to the spirit in which they were founded. Pure research cannot have an eye on the bottom line else you get what we have today... a dreary endless procession of mild improvements on existing PROVEN technologies. The point of pure research is to push back the boundaries of what isn't proven, to find the new, the revolutionary. Yet that is almost always unjustifiable from a 'profit' making ventures standpoint. It takes a real set of brass business cajones to pin your hope on the 'possible' breakthroughs that 'might' come out of a costly pure research endeavor. And that is why these labs are far more about the bottom line now than they were when they changed the world. It has improved those companies bottom line.... and assured them they will be the first on the extinction list when the next revolutionary change occurs. They are the buggy makers at the advent of the car, candle makers in the path of electric light etc etc etc...
It seems they are vague about how to go about re-establishing such strongholds of intellectual freedom. Well I have a suggestion. Not even a greedy one. One Billion dollars a year. One. A drop in the bucket of federal spending. One Billion free and clear. No strings attached. No agenda with it. One Billion a year to establish an institute which has the sole purpose to explore the un-explored. To test the untested. To push back the boundaries of our knowledge. This would be agreed to for something insane like 999 years with provisions for adjusting to inflation etc... The idea would be to slowly build up the foremost power in discovery. The reward would be for it to exist in the US. How might such an enterprise work? Well I have some ideas and I wanted to lay them out so here goes.
First and foremost I would make it a completely open process. The work would be online, and available to all comers so the first budget expenditure would be in making it a common workplace available for all from anywhere in the world. In other words, the founding principle of this process would be to include as many as possible. And I do not mean completed studies would be available. I mean underway projects would be transparent. The results of test runs would happen real time. All raw data would be available. Monetary expenditures would be equally transparent.
Second, while such an endeavor would obviously need its own research facilities, I would arrange for a yearly allotment of lab time at the top available facilities rather than try and re-invent the wheel.
Third, How to handle the money. First, 25% a year would go into trust for the foundation in order to eventually develop it into a self sustaining venture regardless of the success of its research or the fickle support of government. Another 25% would go into a practical branch which spent its time trying to develop practical uses, ventures etc from the research being done. Their goal not to make money so much as to break ground in the market place for the new ideas. In other words to take the theoretical and put it to solid real world use. A major goal would be to test economy of scale on at least one new technology per year. Most ventures would likely not take hold but a few should and before long should add to the self sufficient nature of the venture. Profits would go into trust or evenly dispersed bonus money to the entire enterprise.
One important note. The person in the highest position of authority could not make more than 3 times the person at the lowest rank in the research process.
The other money would go into making research possible. 1/3 in people, 1/3 in facilities and 1/3 in expenses.
Decisions about what was to be researched would be entirely in the research branch. No input from the practical branch. The price the practical branch pays for its existence and free access to what comes out of the labs is no control in the process. the practical branch also gets the legal headaches. The basic idea is not to control use of what is discovered, but to keep it open for use by anyone. Patent license agreements would be allowed but at no greater than 1% of the value of a finished product sold at retail.
The goal behind the trust is two fold. Eventually a large enough trust would form to create a solid income able to sustain the venture even if nothing ever panned out or government funding were withdrawn (most likely inevitable). Thus making it possible for such a foundation to remain true to the founding principle of 'blue-sky' research. One problem with entities like Bell labs is that they were secondary to the goal of making money and thus once the market toughened the free form nature of the labs was an un-affordable luxury (in the short term at least). Thus establishing a foundation that exists to do research has to allow some means for its future financial independence separated from the success of its work. Second, I would hope that such a stash in concert with profits from those lines of research that do pan out would eventually give the foundation the ability to go after really large projects again with freedom from something like the federal budget process.
That would be fantastic for pie in the sky research. Based on the fact most economic success today is based on some sort of blue sky research in the past I think it safe to say that properly done such an organization would eventually become a very powerful entity. Once it spear headed a new advance or two it was allowed to take financial advantage of it would soon find a freedom never before experienced by a research lab. The tough part about setting it up would be providing it budgetary support long enough for it to become self sustaining... and maintaining that support even if it took decades, or even centuries. The check on the eventual power of such an organization would be that it had no secrets. Its very existence would be predicated on the concept that Anyone had access to its discoveries. Not a technical ability to gain access... but access granted by making it as available as possible.
However not all advances come from blue sky research. There is something to be said for delivery real honest to god results in the real world with real applications. Lets set up something for that.
How about a billion a quarter deposited into an interest bearing account ear marked for technological milestones clearly defined. Hard, far reaching technical milestones. Far beyond the value of 1 billion dollars. But put in another billion the next quarter, and the following etc... Build a lottery for technology. The higher the value went the more likely someone would undergo to effort to claim it. No robbing the piggy bank on this one. Cold hard liquid assets with interest accrual and a ridiculous life span before it defaults back to the government like 999 years. What goals might be put forth?
An established lunar dark side observatory.
A Self sustaining Mars Colony.
A round trip expedition to Alpha Centauri.
The discovery of another earth like planet.
More earth bound goals?
10%, 25%, 50%, 75% payouts for an ecologically sustainable alternative to fossil fuels. The percentages representing market share the alternative must achieve.
A graduate AI that passes the Turing Test.
An automated travel vehicle with F-1 crash survivability for its occupants.
A production Scram Jet
A Fusion Reactor
But more important than the goals would be the basic premise of receiving a payout ONLY if you delivered a final result. Do this in concert with a pure 'blue-sky' research capacity and you should cover both the practical and the theoretical. Currently we are mired in a practical doldrum. Nobody wants to risk the new, and the few ventures that attempt to are generally aborted after any setbacks. At least on the government side of things. Look at the long list of aborted next generation vehicle attempts from NASA over the past two decades. On top of that, cost plus contracting has a nasty habit of nurturing parasitic long term ventures designed more to vacuum money out of federal coffers than to return any more than the bare minimum result needed to continue the influx of money.
To some extent this report simply said the US is moribound in the area of new research. We are in other words sitting on our laurels luxuriating in the glow of past successes... and the rest of the world is catching up fast. The head start the US got on the current technological era ushered in after WWII has just about evaporated. Just like the Dream Team finally got trounced in the Olympics, soon too will we be getting technologically trounced. And that has far more ramifications than falling behind in athletics. We are playing the hare... and tortoise is catching up. Only unlike in the parable tale, the tortoise is really another hare, a motivated hungry hare that will not easily give ups its advantage once it manages to pass us if it has not already. Just because we have done so well for so long does not mean we will continue to do so. We must take steps to ensure we remain at the top of scientific advancement. If history teaches us nothings else I think it has shown that those who advance lead and those who do not are over run.
