zlacker

Nice that the Economist is endorsing Obama, but the major problem I see with him is that he wants to make alternative Energy the cornerstone of the American economic revitalisation.

I think that's wrong. Energy independence is a fine issue, but I believe that the new government should pay as much interest to the real advances in science that are coming.

The internet has opened up a new frontier for science. Not the little toys that allow you locate your friends on your mobile phones, but the more fundamental changes - milions of people can work on the same thing at the same time, knowledge can be available to everyone at no cost, communication can happen globally without any problem, and hardware is cheap and fast.

What this means is that humanity is about to make a new intellectual leap forward. It's not there yet because the tools are not yet available that actually allow it work efficiently, but facebook and future generations of such connectivity tools will make it possible.

When these methods are applied to biology or robotics, the combined intellectual avility of human beings made lead to some type of exponential effect that will finally allow us create things that we cannot dream of yet.

We are standing on the chasm of the unknown. We should be forging forward, looking for new things, not focusing on that that we know.

It's an adventure like the adventure of first flight. Governments should recognize this, and they should focus on non-commercial research that will take us to where we could be.

>>markes+(OP)
It doesn't seem to me that most people want to be informed or knowledgeable. While the Internet has made information and knowledge much more accessible it has helped in another area much more: rampant, mindless consumerism.

While I don't care to debate Obama's policies in this forum I would like to point out that advances in battery technology will help with both the foreign energy issue and many of the technological issues you mention. There is also the issue of powering the countless servers that are used.

>>anthon+J
There is no such thing as consumerism. We have come this far as a species because we want new things - new toys, new explosions, new entertainment. The more people want, the more money there is for invention and science.

I'm not saying that energy as a technological focus is wrong. But there are things that are closer to my heart - like robots. It's expensive and time consuming to develop a robot more advanced that what currently exists. The companies do it, but they think of their commercial gain first. Government should also have labs which does research this area, and there should be a reasonable amount of focus there.

>>markes+(OP)
Alternative energy gets you votes. Ethanol especially.

And I don't think a marginal few $ billion from Washington will do much good in this area. If it did, we'd all be driving around in the Hydrogen powered cars that Bush and Clinton lavished such unimaginable sums on.

>>markes+(OP)
Wikipedia et al. work because they can be divided into a bunch of little orthogonal fiefdoms for a bunch of internet tinpot dictators. It's accretion, not collaboration. You can't crowd-source a rocket to the moon.

>>markes+(OP)
I think we can see additional funding to primary research atop of what's focused on energy.

I also think that the focus for alternative energy as a primary mission will really alleviate the traditional hurdle of infrastructure or critical mass requirements: instead of just dropping the technology as before, people will start considering them seriously.

OTOH, I'm a huge optimist and fan of this candidate, so take everything I say with a huge grain of salt. :-)

>>prospe+K1
You may not be able to crowd-source a rocket, but you sure as hell can crowd-source a moon crawler robot. The size and skill level of the robot building community is amazing, and these people can only find themselves now because of the intenet. And only now is there so much information available for the new ones.

One guy writes the motion detectors, another writes the pan-tilt, everyone reviews everyone elses code and suggests improvements. If this were effective today, we could have giant leaps forward. Soon it willl happen.

>>markes+92
You're talking about making a conventional device in an unconventional way. I'm talking about making something completely new.

Historically, groundbreaking scientific work has been done by one or a few extraordinary individuals (Einstein, Watson and Crick), and groundbreaking engineering work has been done by carefully selected groups led by an extraordinary individual (Oppenheimer, von Braun). I don't see how the Internet changes that.