Errata - after re-reading this after posting, it didn't sound quite right, and (after doing a bit of research) found I'd screwed the pooch.
Maiman did develop the first operational laser, but not for AT&T... they (Bell Labs, that is) come into the story because their researchers Arthur Schawlow and Charles Townes wrote the seminal papers.
Good background info sources
Collaborative efforts on protein folding and other biotech may produce more obviously 'human' results in the short term. On the other hand, where would we now be if theoretical and experimental physicists from Zeeman in 1897 through to 1960 had not sewn the scientific undergarments Theodore Maiman used to create the first working laser in 1960 while researching improved long distance communication for AT&T?
Very few would have foreseen 45 years later lasers becoming nearly ubiquitous in everyday life, and with multitudes of both direct (laser surgery tools, etc.) and indirect (bar code readers, mass storage) medical applications.
Similarly, Max Von Laue was interested in learning what happens when light (or, more generally, EM radiation) was transmitted through crystals. X-ray crystallography wasn't developed specifically for decoding DNA's basic structure, but it certainly was key to DNA's elucidation.
Now, I'm not predicting that improving our basic understanding of gravitation will lead to significant medical tools. Point is, that we don't know what such knowledge will bring, and the history of science shows the chances are good there will be a bucketful of by-products important to humanity.
Also, this isn't an either-or proposition. If one wants to devote all their spare comp cycles to folding@home, great. Want to support multiple projects? Select other projects to support, set what percentage of spare computer time to throw at each of them, and away you go.
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Maiman did develop the first operational laser, but not for AT&T ... they (Bell Labs, that is) come into the story because their researchers Arthur Schawlow and Charles Townes wrote the seminal papers.
Good background info sources
http://www.bell-labs.com/about/history/laser/index .html
http://www.spie.org/web/oer/august/aug00/maiman.ht ml
Very few would have foreseen 45 years later lasers becoming nearly ubiquitous in everyday life, and with multitudes of both direct (laser surgery tools, etc.) and indirect (bar code readers, mass storage) medical applications.
Similarly, Max Von Laue was interested in learning what happens when light (or, more generally, EM radiation) was transmitted through crystals. X-ray crystallography wasn't developed specifically for decoding DNA's basic structure, but it certainly was key to DNA's elucidation.
Now, I'm not predicting that improving our basic understanding of gravitation will lead to significant medical tools. Point is, that we don't know what such knowledge will bring, and the history of science shows the chances are good there will be a bucketful of by-products important to humanity.
Also, this isn't an either-or proposition. If one wants to devote all their spare comp cycles to folding@home, great. Want to support multiple projects? Select other projects to support, set what percentage of spare computer time to throw at each of them, and away you go.