Posted by
Grant Holland on
Mar 04, 2014; 10:11pm
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/Fwd-IP-Re-Read-re-Losing-a-Generation-of-Scientists-tp7585032p7585062.html
Pamela,
Shrewd observation.
Going back 25+ years earlier than those people, the Cybernetics movement
was a global intellectual effort that was ultimately interested in a
"science of mind". Most of its participants were probably academics, and
it included a broad array of passions - not only mathematicians like
Wiener, Von Neumann, Ashby and McCulloch, but also the likes of Margaret
Mead (sociology) and Gregory Bateson (psych).
"Fortunately", WWII "happened" and these folks answered the
call-to-arms. Its quite reasonable to argue that the computer revolution
sprang from these folks at those times. The first commercial computer
was arguably the Univac I, which was developed at the U. of Pa. A
commercial company was formed around it in 1947 (Univac). IBM entered
the computer business in 1953 (I believe).
Intellectual interests by a bunch of academics seems to have been the
compelling driver. War turned it into engineering. Post-war turned it
into business.
FWIW, Grant
On 3/4/14, 1:48 PM, Pamela McCorduck wrote:
> Perhaps it was just incredibly fortunate for us that those people—Licklider, Kahn, Cerf and others—were in a position at a special time to make a dream come true. They had the ways and means to spend money, and spent it pretty wisely. Everything the pioneers did wasn’t successful—a big, expensive time-share project at MIT/Bell Labs fizzled. But like commercial ventures, what was successful was spectacularly so.
>
> Perhaps the founding of the Internet was something like the founding fathers of this country, the constellation of minds formed at just the right moment, with just the right sensibilities. Perhaps it has nothing at all to do with which kind of organization, commercial or governmental, is the midwife.
>
>
> On Mar 4, 2014, at 2:50 PM, Marcus G. Daniels <
[hidden email]> wrote:
>
>> On 3/4/14, 11:33 AM, glen wrote:
>>> Although I haven't participated, I think we can learn quite a bit from the outright generosity shown by Kickstarter participants.
>> To me it is important to believe there are things inherently worth doing, and that there is someone that wants to do them and a means to get them done. With government funding and venture capital, the money is mostly controlled by certain types of people with certain types of values. Those kinds of people won't pursue the diversity of possible innovations, and they aren't the `best' in any absolute sense nor `deserve' the control they have. They are just fit for their environment. So to me it's no more generosity than donating to a political campaign, it's just that these technical campaigns actually might modify the world slightly, should they succeed.
>>
>> Marcus
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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