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Clinton Wants $497 Million for Nanotech Research
jimmcq writes "President Clinton on Friday proposed a $2.8 billion increase in research into elusive medical cures and high-technology breakthroughs like reducing information in the Library of Congress into a unit the size of a sugar cube. More info at Yahoo! News." Specifically, Clinton is advocating "as much as" $497 million for nanotech out of a $2.8 billion increase over last year's ~$38 billion federal allocation for scientific research. But don't get excited yet. Congress holds the budget pursestrings and may not go along with all or any of the President's proposals.
Does Clinton want to be known for having started a second Manhattan project (I suppose it is a lot better than what he will most likely be known for)?
If your position is that we shouldn't explore something that's dangerous, you picked a piss-poor example in the Manhattan project.
If the US hadn't poured a whole bunch of money into that project in a hell of hurry, somebody else would have gotten it first, and the world would be in way worse shape than it presently is.
You can't fight something unless you understand it, and you can't fully understand it unless you can build it from scratch.
OK, then please explain to me why IBM funded the etching of the words "IBM" into Xenon atoms? Or why Xerox-PARC invented the modern GUI without ever making an actual product based around it? Or why most major corporations employ top researchers to do work that, although certainly related to the company's broad goals, is not directly related to any specific product in development?
The fact is that there are many companies out there that fund basic research. They do it primarily because if a breakthrough occurs, they want to have people in-house that can help turn it into a working product.
You are also ignoring private charities and Universities. There are many private schools with hundreds of millions in endowments, and many of those do and would be used to fund basic research. These endowments would be even bigger in a society with a lower tax burden, since many wealthy people leave their fortunes to their alma mater. There are also private donations directly toward research programs.
We see that the government has funded most basic research. But this does not imply that if the government cut off funding that the research would simply stop. There are private sources for funding. That funding simply gets used elsewhere when folks see that the government is already pumping lots of money into basic research.
I think a much better use of that money is an accross-the-board tax cut. There is lots of private money going around for private research, and there would be more if the government wasn't pumping so much money into it. Governments are notoriously inefficient, and I question whether government should be in the business of funding research.
There is also a fundamentally anti-scientific element to having a centralized source for all of the research funding. A scientist with a wacky idea is far more likely to get funding if there are dozens of private sources than if most of the money comes from one source.
Certainly there are worse things the government can do with a billion dollars, but I'd much rather see it returned to the people who earned it.
Well, yes, we will have.
Anyway, the article doesn't go into a lot of detail. It's entirely possible that some of the proposed funds would go to astronomy. Want to increase the odds of that? Contact your gov't reps.
What abunch of Luddites.
:v)
Look guys, we're grown up enough to get over the "Gray Goo" scenarios of killer, runaway nanobots. We have the damn things already, with names like "Ebloa", "HIV, "Hepatitis" and "Termites". The only reason we can't currently beat them is because we don't have control of a suitably advanced technology.
Nanotechnology is THE advanced technology. It is the only technology we would be able to counter a deliberate nanotechnology offensive with - if anyone were able to build a serious nanotech weapon, and that is not as simple as it seems.
The alternative is to wait - either not doing much, or actively banning nanotechnology, it doesn't matter much - until they develop nanotechnology in Switzerland, Brazil, Japan or whatever. Once someone builds a single functional assembler, it will not be hard to distribute copies or cross national boundaries.
Transmeta has already started the process with their "soft" processor. The design concepts and partnership with IBM have inexorably set in motion a series of steps which will bring us protein-based nanotechnology within 5 years, and an assembler probably by 2010.
I've rounded up the details and links on http://olliver.peng uinpowered.com/launchpad/transprocessor.html
Vik
Research in nano is nice, because it advances technological fronts on many sides- materials science/manufacturing, chemistry, molecular biology, medicine, computer science
A mapping of the near earth objects/space is of little return (short term). Also, by waiting a few years technological improvements could greatly increase the search speed. (recall the article about waiting to start on computer intensive projects because of moores law?)
Thus a nano/related investment is probably the best bang for the buck...
LetterRip
There is a world of difference between basic nanotechnology, and a full scale autonomous replicator. Probably on the order of 20 to 50 years of reasearch difference, minimum. Early nano allows for better basic materials sciene- ie fewer flaws in metals, plastics, silicon, which increases strength, reduces resistance, and basically improves properties all around.
This is very early level stuff, your talking at least twenty years off for the applications you speak of (and much more likely closer to 100...)
LetterRip
Things like Astronomy have been languishing for years. You'd think that with the recent hoopla over asteroids, we'd at least be spending megabucks on a complete mapping of the local area of the solar system. Nope, just the same token investments through NASA as always.
:-(
/., so he can say his peace), but there are plenty of other sciences that the US is ignoring, and other countries are mostly following our lead.
This, not to mention the tremendous value in such things as solar research which could help us better understand our climate and the dangers that might be posed to us by our own "life-giving" sun.
Nah, nanotech is cooler. If we shrink the space used for the Library of Congress, we'll have *really* accomplished something.
I'm picking on astronomy because I have a friend in the field (who also reads/posts to
I am teaching a college astronomy course again for the first time in about 15 years. It is astonishing to me to see how more information we have been able to accumulate in that time, and the effect that our nearly instantaneous access to that information is having on the way I can teach. So much of this change seems to be because the access to the information allows groups to informally come together to share resources and work together in problem solving. (e.g. One fundemental insight into a solution is quickly shared and implemented when you can just knock together a webpage and post it rather than waiting for the peer-reviewed journals to publish your short paper.)
Nano tech devices that would allow for raw information to be distributed more effeciently would increase the rate of progress.
The only downside to this announcement is that ~500 million of a 2.8 billion dollar budget isn't really nearly the kind of investment we should be making in fundenmental research.
There must be some sort of mechanism (other invoking "Tang" and "Blister packaging") to convince people of the benefits that investing basic research brings.
In illa quae ultra sunt
Thomas Edison was not a scientist. He did not engage in discovery of new science. He did not work in the same realm as his peers.
Thomas Edison advanced TECHNOLOGY, not SCIENCE. There are fundamentally different motivations involved in the two. This has been the subject of quite a few essays by the late Thomas Kuhn.
There are plenty of debates as to whether science leads or lags technology, a topic I do not want get into. But people like Alexander Bell and Thomas Edison fundamentally developed new technology. They did not carefully consider mechanisms by which their technologies worked, nor did they CARE about careful investigation of mechanism. They made products that served a function.
Both science and technology advance society. Technology does it with a shorter time lag than science, in general. Science often does not have immediately visible consequences to society - technology always does. The failure of the government to fund science will leave us with a society that is fundamentally driven by technology. And that has long lasting consequences to consider.
When you create an account, you also get given an "anonymous user" account.
Now here's the clever bit
There is no link whatsoever between your normal user account and the Anonymous user account. You can use either to post but slashdot keeps no information to link the accounts. Also, there is nothing to distinguish one Anonymous User from another. (Note that a side effect of this is that an individual anonymous user cannot accumulate karma since this could identify someone with high karma (although it might be good to allow karma to be used if the anonymous user wants to)
The good thing is that anonymous cowards drop below the event horizon (unless they get moderated up) but people with genuine comments they may not wished to be attributed to their real personas get to post. If someone abuses their AU persona, it is banned. True they can get another one by re-registering as a new real user but at least that requires some degree of effort and is more likely to discourage the casual spammer.
Rich
Research is, obviously, a Very Good Thing. But let's remember Clinton promises everyone that they'll get special treatment in the budget next year. He doesn't actually push for everything, since if he did, we'd be back in debt. So he just blames Congress instead. We can only hope that science is one of those things he's willing to actually do more than talk about.
After Clipper Chip/CDA/etc, I'm not too optimistic.
It is not 'evil' for the private sector to do research. The reason it is benificial to have government funded research, is because corporations have only a responsibility to there stock holders. Stock holders rarely take the long view on investments, hence all research will be for immediate applicability. Unfortunately, basic research, that which brings about enourmous leaps in our understanding and technology, are not a good short term investment.
Ergo, we have the government making a long term investment for the public good.
LetterRip
i found these two links from the A-Infos Radio Project:
this is an MP3 interview with the Professor
and this is his essay on Nanosocialism
basically he talks about the social aspects of nanotechnology, building on some of the promise resident in the molecular and massively mirco scale.
I'm not someone who advocates trying to resist the progress of technology, I believe we have to embrace it and change our lives accordingly, but its interesting that Nano-technology research is not more controversial considering the possible dangers involved.
The "dangers" involved in debated and even banned areas such as human cloning, bio engineering, and true AI are really pretty small compared with Nanotech, where one invisibly small nanomachine, programmed to multiply and destroy its host could eradicate life on earth and still not stop. Does Clinton want to be known for having started a second Manhattan project (I suppose it is a lot better than what he will most likely be known for)?
And the prospect of Nanotech has some _very_ interesting implications on the current RIAA, MPAA, and other "evil forces of the world" situation with the freedom of Information. When nanotech comes along, will we have a Copyright Act that forbids programming nanomachines to work-around "nano-scan protection systems"? Will Ford sue me for writing a Nano-assembler that can make a copy of your neighbors Mustang? Will Coca-Cola go after me for having bought one bottle and then copied it to all my friends at the party? And most importantly, if its true as the Copyright defenders say, that copy protection is necessary for the economy to work, will society then end with Nanotech? Maybe all the companies that produce physcial items ought to be out lobbying congress to not spend another cent on Nano-research, which could cripple their bussiness!!!
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We cannot reason ourselves out of our basic irrationality. All we can do is learn the art of being irrational in a reasonable way.