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US Looks For Input On "The Next Big Things"
coondoggie writes "What are the next big things in science and technology? Teleportation? Unlimited clean Energy? The scientists and researchers at DARPA and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy put out a public call this week for ideas that could form what they call the Grand Challenges — ambitious yet achievable goals that that would herald serious breakthroughs in science and technology."
We always want to know what's next, what's the exciting thing we can dream will solve all our problems. But we don't want to finance it. And we don't want to finance the basic research for those big things without promise of a payoff.
Have gnu, will travel.
How bout -
1. Cheap and easy ways to clean water for the world
2. Cheap and easy ways to provide light for the world
3. Cheap and easy ways to feed the world
4. Cheap and easy ways to maintain sanitation
5. Cheap and easy ways to provide education to the world.
That's what I'd like to see a focus on. Unfortunately, we're spending money on forcing the chevy volt on the world instead.
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
Do you really think humans need more ways to kill each other?
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
Then we can worry about what kind of toys we want to play with.
Breakthroughs cannot be planned. You can put a whole lot of smart people to work, give them everything they want, and maybe you will get lucky. But any attempt to plan and direct breakthroughs will only serve to prevent them. That was one of the lessons from the soviet economy. Don't people ever listen?
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Do you really think humans need more ways to kill each other?
Yes. Because the more ways we have to kill each other, the less we are likely to use them...
Enjoy science fiction? "Turing Evolved" - AI, Mecha, Androids and rail-gun battles. What more could you want?
So, Government takes my money under penalty of violence and then spends it asking "So, uh, what exactly should we do with all this money?"
Solutions are best found through variation and selection, processes that are quashed and stifled by central planning; the power structure should be decentralized and localized as much as possible, and that is precisely the point of the Free Market.
We need to invest in increasing Internet transmission speeds. There are a lot of reasons high speed internet everywhere in the USA and then eventually abroad would be a great investment. For one it would create a lot of jobs to get such a system in place and build a Internet that will have future proof speeds for years to come.
Already people are watching more streaming media than ever before, youtube, netflix, the list goes on. There are numerous other benefits, such as various businesses able to work more quickly and in conjunction with one another. Sending data, like video from various surveillance cameras. Various Entertainment companies sending massive amounts of data such as movies that are being worked on between several companies back and forth to facilitate and streamline the editing process etc.
A lot more people would start to store their data in the "cloud" since a faster internet would enable them to stream their stored media etc in a central and mostly safe location. The demand for that service which has already started to become a big thing would become an amazing and competitive business, it would grow so much faster. Other companies could also deposit other things into your cloud storage, like say if you gave them family videos to convert etc. They could as soon as the process was done send you it in digital format if that's what you wanted.
There are also numerous other reasons such as Telemedicine, Distance Learning and so many other things. A better and faster internet is good for everyone businesses and private users. How many people who also don't have access to high speed internet would potentially buy services from these US businesses which would in turn make more jobs.
It would change things for the better, not worse.
There might be some very short-lived havoc in the markets caused by the sudden devaluation of energy company stocks, but that's it.
First of all, most energy consumers aren't using fungible energy forms like electricity, but specific forms such as coal (smelting) or oil (fertilizers, fuel). Even if electricity was made free overnight, petrol would still cost money the next day! Converting all factories to purely electricity and building plants to generate hydrocarbon feedstock from CO2 and electricity would require massive investment in capital works. The markets would recover, and the result would be a boom like no other. Engineers that lost their jobs in the oil extraction industry would retrain and find jobs in the oil generation industry, or the oil-to-electricity plant conversion industry.
On top of that, whole new industries would pop up or get a massive boost. For example, recycling is mostly a question of energy. Currently, it's just not worth it for a lot of things. Given unlimited free energy, the local rubbish tip suddenly becomes an worthwhile source of rare metals.
To see how stupid your statement is, imagine living on a Moon base. What if somebody proposes a new technology for the free production of Oxygen:
"Because cheap (or free), clean, unlimited oxygen would collapse the economy overnight and the ramifications of that would change the world as we know it. I'm all for unlimited clean air because I'm sure that stuff is great for people, but not at the expense of my life style. So if someone does come up with this, it better cost a few hundred million (or more) bucks to build a reactor and get it online."
See how stupid that sounds?
Is the Earth's economy endangered by an endless supply of free Oxygen?
How about the endless supply of free sunlight?
Dunderheads. We are on our way to being able to print anything we need. 3d printing will probably make traditional manufacturing a bygone technology in the next twenty years.
Oh wait, some NPE just sued me for patent violation. Never mind, guess I'll go develop it in some other country.
Dislike the Electoral College? Lobby your state to join the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact.
Enough said...
My other account has mod points!
So money can be spent on innovation rather than lawyers?
"Because we are not employing at entry level, offshoring will kill our industry stone dead."
Should they come in a 40 watt range?
I may close up early today.
"Whatever happens, we have got
The Maxim Gun, and they have not."
Too much emphasis has been put into basic research.
Clearly a quote from someone not working in research. The problem facing research and development today is that there is not nearly enough focus on basic research - everything is about immediate, applied applications - which is the highest risk type of research you can do, since the goal is "build a very specific thing". And it doesn't broaden your horizons since you're aiming at specific targets informed by existing theory.
1. Lack of safe drinking water. - a solar panel, 2 filters, a UV filter - can make water for 100's. ... energy is then a small issue. ... spend big to rule the world... its not hard work - ask the NSA for ideas.
Beyond that you need to build it right.
2. Continuously monitors an individual's personal health-related data - big blood test at a clinic - chip system once problem area is found.
3. Generates off-grid water and energy for a small village derived from human and organic waste. NGOs have had this for years and years...
Small and large scale, gas, solar in a box, wind, led....
4. Autonomous underwater vehicle - NSA and US nuclear subs/mini subs have done that many times...
5. At risk foster children - read the stats on state abuse and care, spend cash on better care.
6. Invasive and brain sounds like infection and risks low moral - better to surround the head and fit a super computer near the "pilot".
7. Distances greater than 200 miles - sounds like an isolated fire base is running low on juice? Air to air can get close, if you have distances greater than 200 miles that are not yours, you have a mini Stalingrad and are losing
The bad guys can usually work out where the juice is going too.. not the best idea.
8. Point-to-point passenger travel system - give cash to France and the UK - they did Concorde right vs the flying tourist bus and sr71...
9. Optical networks - if the US let basic blue sky optical research slip to need to ask that question - game over. Buy from South Korea, China, Brazil, South Africa, Ireland when they have a product to sell...
10. A mainstream platform for low-cost fabrication and packaging of systems on a chip for communications, sensing, medical, energy, and defense applications? You have the internet '2' - thats fast- communications, sensing, medical, energy, and defense applications your Universities can pump that out with funding any day of the week... US telco/medical 'brains' are one area that the US has covered many times over.
"low-cost fabrication" is the Soviet Union in the 1980's question - pay more+++++ for sealed local labs or let Australia, UK, Canada, NZ bid for trusted sealed labs - If your "defense applications" need "mainstream platform" something has gone wrong with your massive hardline mil optical/sat networks- too expensive? not looked after? too much data been collected? Only loser countries like Australia are poor and have to mix "mainstream platform" and "defense applications"...a very strange question for the USA to have to consider.
11. "high-bandwidth free-space communication, laser strike, and defense against missiles?" Just like the US did in the 1960's70's80's90's - spend lots of cash on sats, think big, send lots and lots up.. Get next gen "Cray, IBM, Honeywell" to place massive amounts of CPU power in Australia, UK, Canada, NZ as the raw data flows... use massive new optical/sat networks to send data back to the US in small sorted encrypted amounts
12. Cost parity across the nation's electric grid for solar power - the US lost its solar in early 1980's when solar was removed from the White House.
Any US public investment in that area will be in a lab in Germany, France, Spain, South Africa, Brazil, China in a month and been mass produced under old and new brands months later. If the US wants solar, offer real cash buy back from solar homes (FIT), stop states from over charging for site 'engineering'/'code' inspections adding $1000's onto costs. Buy in China and watch US suburbia be covered.
13. increased resolution in manufacturing? Give massive cash and tax breaks to Intel? Give massive contracts to Intel.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Very few businesses ever invest in fundamental research, and even fewer in trying to open up new fields of inquiry. This is sensible - it's standard business logic - stick to your core business.
The history of the modern world is that all the big ideas were funded by the government and spun off into tech companies once commercial viability had been proved, but this was not a quick process, and there's plenty of stuff which never is - that's the whole point of Linux and GNU to some extent: they're basic computer tools which are so fundamental that everyone benefits from them existing, but would be very difficult to justify creating if they had to be created by just the one company, or a group which needs to show immediate commercial viability.
Actually, we already have homemade portable rail guns, and lasers powerful enough to kill the things at which you point them. (Search gizmag.com for examples.)
In comparison, a plasma rifle -- even in the 40-watt range -- would probably be rather ineffective.
It would improve your quality of life.
Cheaper energy lowers how much people have to pay for electricity. This in turn gives people more money to spend on other things. So instead of having to pay $120 on your next electric bill you pay $60, meaning you use that extra $60 however you please. Like buying new clothes or going out to eat more often.
Free energy wouldn't necessarily be free to consumers, since they still have to pay for the upkeep of the system + labor costs, but I'd imagine a normal electric bill to be just a few dollars. But now you basically have an extra $115 in your pocket every month. And could you imagine the sales in electric cars? The market would explode because people would save tens of thousands of dollars by owning an electric vehicle. You need engineers and factory workers to build those.
Oh, and thanks to the unlimited virtually free energy, businesses have lower operating costs, meaning the price of items across the board would drop.
Something about alarm clocks that turn off when you tell them, but then 10 minutes later they won't turn off until you're in the shower.
Also, a card that has your computer desktop password linked to it and you take it from terminal to terminal I think.
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
Actually, a militarily functional rifle would need to be in the 12kW range with a total capacity of at least 36 kW-seconds.
That equates roughly to the performance level of a modern M4.
GrpA
Enjoy science fiction? "Turing Evolved" - AI, Mecha, Androids and rail-gun battles. What more could you want?
Seriously, we need a COTS style program to get multiple companies building thorium reactors. Why? If done right, these will burn up 95% of nuke 'waste'. And it will do it SAFELY.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
It astonishes me that a technology as safe, environmentally friendly and cheap as this still isn't being used. As always, the political will and understanding is lacking. For christs sake, here in the UK we're still talking about building "traditional" nuclear stations and natural gas burning plants!
Cheap, abundant electricity without the CO2 emissions of burning fossil fuels will be a revelation.
You really have a bone to pick with the US Military complex don't you? First of all, not everything funded by DARPA is for the purpose of killing. Perhaps it can be used to help people kill others, but a lot of the time, money and effort they spend goes towards protecting troops. You may argue that we need less military, but if we are going to have one, they might as well be as safe as we can make them. They are working on driverless cars and supply carrying robots precisely so that humans do not have to risk their lives doing these things. You can hate DARPA all you want, but I admire the work that they do to save lives.
Also, I would be willing to bet that the state of trauma healthcare would not be what it is today without the advancements made by military doctors during WWII, Korea, and especially Vietnam. Even to this day they are developing new technologies to keep wounded soldiers alive long enough to make it to a field hospital. Those same technologies are very applicable to people who are shot, stabbed, or in plain old accidents in the real world. So please, try to be more open-minded, and understand that DARPA doesn't just want bigger bombs.
I"ve gotta stick in the video from Neal deGrasse Tyson here on this very topic of "The next big thing"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjY0vqgDMnE
Lots of people talking about hitching a ride with other people doing the research and work are foolish. You do that to catch up, not to lead. If you wait for someone else to pass you so you can follow them, you'll end up at the back of the line.
I don't know about the economy, but clearly this guy is suffering from oxygen deprivation. No wonder he is gung ho for cheap, unlimited oxygen - he's in such dire need of it. Just don't let him anywhere need the mega-maid