Academe: Technology For Sale

Until recently, we clung to the notion that some institutions -- journalism, politics, academe, art and culture -- stood somewhat outside of the marketplace, keeping a check on the freedom and prosperity brought us by forces like technology and capitalism. We've already lost politics, media and much of culture. Now, academe is biting the dust, with significant consequences for the credibility and future of academic technological research.

America has always loved technology and money in generally equal amounts, since they are so intertwined. And techno-capitalism has been very good to us, bringing both freedom and prosperity.

But until recently, we clung loosely to the notion that some institutions -- politics, journalism, academe, art and culture -- stood outside the marketplace at least somewhat beyond bottom-line calculations. That was important, especially in a free and prosperous society. That principle established their credibility and helped keep social forces like big business and big technology in some sort of check and balance.

Nodody kidded themselves about the fact that money was the engine that drove both business and technology in the U.S but there were at least some critical, detached and independent voices to raise questions, sound alarms, and pursue research avenues for reasons other than profit. That, increasingly, is no longer true.

Once upon a time, journalists felt free to take the occasional investigative or editorial poke at big business (rather than celebrate people like Bill Gates), and universities provided safe havens where politics and P&L statements couldn't intrude too brazenly on critical thinking and expression. Artists, too, from musicians and painters to filmmakers, playwrights and authors, believed they wielded a particular kind of integrity; they could be outspoken, take sharp, honest looks at society and culture. Those kinds of penetrating looks are rapidly vanishing from both mainsteam media and the arts. Even the theater has been corporatized, dominated by big-bucks, mass-marketed musicals and other super-productions.

The new global corporatism has proven more powerful than any of these institutions or the ethical standards they once brandished. Nobody seems able to stand up under the onslaught of corporate money, or cling to values beyond maximum revenue input. This is what makes capitalism and corporatism so different. Corporatism's contemporary clout dates to the 80's, when a combination of government de-regulation of business, begun by President Jimmy Carter and greatly accelerated by Ronald Reagan -- and the advent of technology, marketing and global business created a new kind of ideology. It has become the most powerful social and cultural force in the world, especially when linked with technology.

One by one, American institutions -- politics, business, agriculture, journalism, the arts, such professions as law and medicine, even middle-class restaurants, real estate firms and funeral homes -- have succumbed to the Corporate Republic. Academe had been one of the last holdouts. Scientific and other kinds of research was always thought to be governed by values other than simple profit, beholden to nothing but the principles of science. No more.

Columbia University in New York, for example, is spearheading an academic revolution, profiting from its scientific research and development of intellectual property. Columbia annually collects more in patents and royalties -- $100 million -- than any other university, its annual report announces, and is aggressively cashing in on its technological research.

"There's been a paradigm shift," in academic thinking about selling research to corporations, says Cornelius W. Sullivan, vice provost for research at the University of Southern California. "There was a time that this kind of work -- and the idea of making money from your research -- was not acceptable at universities, including ours." Sullivan is dead-on. It's no longer possible for the public, members of the student body, or anyone else to really grasp the motives and goals of scientific researchers working on new technologies. They could be working for the good of humanity. Or they could be trying to cash in on lucrative patents, generating uneeded or flawed technology for cash, or to get a sweet corporate contract for themselves or their school. Making money off of technological research is certainly acceptable now. This year, The New York Times reports, Columbia will collect more than $144 million from patents. One covers a new technique that uses animal cells to manufacture proteins for use as drugs; another discovery paved the way for eye drops to treat glaucoma. Across the country, university officials admit the Net is a gold mine, providing a much faster and larger paybacks for researchers than traditional scientific research in areas like biology. Dot.coms are aggressively seeking investment academic opportunities (at Harvard, Professor Arthur R. Miller is setting up an online law school).

As usual, this "paradigm shift" is accompanied by little or no public debate over the propriety of university research (often funded in part by taxpayers) becoming increasingly tailored to corporate clout. Congess isn't paying attention either; it's much too busy trying to pass laws requiring lobal libraries to keep Johnny off the Playboy Web site.

Yet the issue matters, especially when it relates to technology. Academic researchers are deeply involved in some of the revolutionary technological devevlopments of this century -- genetic mapping, artificial intelligence, super-computing. Theoretically, their work is supposed to proceed ethically, with the public's best interests and the highest standards of science research in mind. How does that happen when professors and administrators are drooling over dot.com stock options and other corporatist contracts? Soon, the public will be as cynical about academic research as they are about government decision-making. And the evolution of technology will get even less scrutiny and oversight. Some of the best elements of the Net and the Web came about because academics and researchers were working outside of the marketplace, not because they were dominated by it.

Corporatism has already proved a more powerful force than any of the institutions that were supposed to keep an eye on its power and hunger. Technology and corporatism are a particularly lethal combination, even more so when applied to competitive and money-hungry institutions like academe. That was a world where technology and research were supprted for their own sake and for the larger public good.

But just last month, Columbia announced the creation of Fathom.com, an online commercial partnership with such other prestigious institutions as the New York Public Library, the British Library and the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History. A couple of months earlier, the university had announced that it was hooking up with Cognitive Arts, a software designer firm planning to offer continuing education on the Web.

Here in the Corporate Republic, there are no public institutions operating outside the marketplace any longer, free of its influence, maintaining the credibility and independence to comment honestly on critical social and cultural issues and to monitor technological growth.

Maybe it's time to stop worrying about how to induce understandably apathetic Americans to vote and to simply start selling stock in the Corporate Republic itself. Looks like a sure winner.

Comments

Money - Better Projects - Better Advancement

[nosilA]

While there are certainly downsides, and Jon Katz did a great job of enumerating them, there are indeed upsides to having money-driven academic research. For one, it means that instead of researching an area that will do little but stimulate the mind of the professor and his little grad students, they are more likely to put out a product that will have impact far outside of academia. This bring on positive looks on academic research from the outside, and encourages public funding as well.

The other benefit is that it teaches the grad students and other who work on the project a lot more than just how to program a robot to recognize who it's talking to, it teaches them how to develop a product, talk with corporate sponsors, and "sell" a proposal. This is very valuable if these students or professors leave acadmia.

In my last semester, I was part of a research project that was 66% sponsored by a private company, and 33% sponsored the the "Pennsylvania Infrastructure Technology Alliance" and the 12 students in this course got to not only apply their skill as engineers, but learned how to give a proposal, conduct cost-benefit analysis, etc, etc. This was probably my most valuable course as an undergrad for that reason.

Academia is just trying to find the happy in-between. They want the public to see the benefit, and the students toget a benefit, while still being able to conduct new and innovative research. I think they're doing a good job.

-nosilA

Can't be too surprised

[YoJ]

You can't be too surprised that universities get jealous when they see their ideas make people multi-millionaires and they don't get a penny. There was a project here at the University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign called Mosaic a little while ago. The project leader graduated and then founded a new company designed on the project, which became Netscape. The university now keeps tighter reign of their "intellectual property". According to their policies, if a student uses university computers for a personal project, the university owns the rights to all the work done. Something to think about.

Re:Researchers need to eat, too

[TheCarp]

> Until recently (relatively speaking), slavery
> was right - does that mean that it's wrong to
> say that slavery is wrong?

This depends on your perspective. Certainly slavery was tolerated, and by some even considered "right". However, I would offer that it never was and never will be "right" to force individuals into slavery and treat them as property, no matter how many people are willing to tolerate it or think that its ok.

> Capatalism has long been accepted as the best
> model for the development of society -
> universally since the fall of Communism.

A) Capitalism and communism are general catagories of ideologies. Many form sof both have never been tried. The failure of one or more forms of communism does not prove capitalism correct.

B) Communism has been quite sucessfull in some places. I direct you to The Farm a community in Tennessee which has experimented with a couple of forms of progressive communism for the past 30 years.

> This isn't about the Corporate Republic
> - instead, it's the early Free Market pioneer's
> dream

Hardly! A free Market pioneers dream is what the corperations crush. All of the benefits that capitalism lovers point to as the result of "market forces" are actually hindered by mega-corps.

Large corperations have found that it is more profitable to crush competition or buy them out than to compete with them on fair ground. They have found that its more profitable to take away peoples choices, than to produce good products.

Once a company is so large and has such a product base that the average person can't help but buy their product, is it really a free market? Noone can compete with them. Nothing can touch their profits.

When its more profitable to make producing better products unprofitable for others than to produce good products yourself, the people get screwed over. It is a moral atrocity to do so. It acts to the detriment of society itself. It makes the corperation a parasite rather than a productive member.

Free market pioneers would roll in their graves to have this perversion called their dream.

How is this much different?

[DrgnDancer]

How is this much different from the old system in which researchers produced potentially flawed technology and biased research in the name of tenure and standing? Academic institutions have always been very politicly and econmically motivated places, it is just that htth were previously "donated" to by large companies and the government rather than working in active partnerships. While certainly there is a paradim shift here, I do not think it as servere as is made out in this article. We are simply seeing a formalization of relationships and conditions that have exist for a long time.

Issue of Concern at MIT

[bonespsk]

This issue has come up a lot recently at MIT. More and more research here is being sponsored by corporations instead of the government or university. Additionally, the entrepreneurial and engineering spirit bred here tends to encourage research into practical applications and not just research for research's sake.

Here's a story about potential conflict's of interests for professors. It involves Prof. Leighton, an MIT prof who's research led to Akamai.

The issue of how patents are handled at universities is also an issue at MIT. Currently, as I understand it, MIT's patent department assists students in obtaining patents in return for a percentage of any income derived from those patents. A view on this was expressed by Prof. Bose (yes, that Bose =) in a guest column in the school newspaper.

A recent partnership with Microsoft (!)brought up more discussions about MIT's role and how the many partnerships with industry affect MIT's goals. (I can't seem to find the articles that popped up about it, though :(

Here's an old one by "Drexel University professor Noble, formerly an assistant professor in MIT's Program in Science, Technology and Society".

IMHO, I don't think industry ties are entirely bad. Like anything else in the world, there are pros and cons. Obviously, as these ties become closer, ethical issues arise, and there isn't a clear resolution to this problem. Unless you make the professors and students choose between academia and industry. The Media Lab is an example of how industry and universities can dovetail successfully. AFAIK, corporations provide funding to the Media Lab as a whole. Then, if they see anything they like, they can take it in house and develop it to their own desires. As a result, the Media Lab receives a huge influx of funding, and is thus able to research things that may or may not have an obvious commercial value. But cool things come out of there all the time. (i.e. Lego Mindstorm was developed there).

Argh

[Benwick]

As usual I agree but as a journalist he should really provide some more examples! So I'll take that leap for him. I graduated the University of Virginia a bit over a year ago. While I was there...

The campus became a regular campsite for companies trying to hawk their products. For example,

• Glamour Magazine was allowed to set up a tent on the illustrious Lawn, hawking products, trying to enlist subscribers, scouting for models, selling poor self-image.
• Football fields and buildings, and renovations (and benches and tables and lightswitches) were named in honor of donors, as usual, but the donors were moving in corporate directions. The main building of our Darden School of Business is called the Pepsi Forum (it's should be no surprise that you can't get Coke in there).
• I first spotted the Reebok logo appearing on our football players in my third or fourth year, although it had probably been there all along; perhaps they increased the size.

(I'm sure there are more examples I've forgotten.)

I don't think Katz adequately addressed the issue of why corporate sponsorship is a problem. In my opinion, such contributions are like the system of patronage that strangled the painting world for many years (and continues to, I believe). You can't really bite the hand that feeds you and then expect another bite. I think it is safe to assume that research at UVA is not going to suddenly announce that caffeine and sugar combine to form toxins that eat your brain... Such systems dilute the value of the research, and also direct it away from "pure research" (as opposed to profit-research) which tends to lead the way in advances that actually help society.

(Incidentally, UVA hosts one of the two crash test research centers that use actual human cadavers in the car; the other is the University of Heidelberg... "Hey, those aren't dummies!")

Jon Katz - duller than a roomful of UFO nuts

[Phil Linngood]

Every few days, the Katz machine churns out another big chunk of crap, weaving whatever is upsetting the geeks into some great conspiracy involving the "Corporate Republic". What exactly is he trying to acheive?

Oh no! Napster got shut down! "Blame the corporate republic".

Oh no! Somebody's sponsoring a University! "It's all the fault of money! Be communist!"

Oh no! Some mad kids went and shot a load of people! "Blame closed source!"

He's like a UFO spotter or some other kind of lunatic conspiracy theorist - nothing but hot air, and an inablility to see how unreasonable he sounds, all the time.

Frankly, it's dull. It's boring. It's the same crap every week. The reason nobody plays "Guess what Katz wrote this week" is that the game is far too easy.

And, like most Americans, he concentrates entirely on what's going on within the borders of his little country. One day, he might actually realise that there's a whole world out there which doesn't care about what goes on in the United States of Overinflated Egos.