Institute For The Future

Deep dive into science and R&D

[Notes from the 27 July expert workshop on the future of science and technology.]

LS: This is just one of those cyclical things. A hundred years ago the U.S. was a follower behind Europe, and rose to world prominence on the basis of European refugees; now, another part of the world is going to become what the U.S. was in the 1930s. Global shifts are the norm; intellectuals are welcome in some places in some times, and unwelcome at others. The future is a great time for anywhere that isn't America.

JLe: This may be a natural consequence of an uneducated populace: the world is getting increasingly mysterious. (An ironic take on Arthur Clarke's notion of science being indistinguisable from magic coming true.)

JL: Around the world I've seen various flavors of anti-Enlightenment movements. Science must change in its rheotric in order to deal with these movements. In the UK, things for higher education are better than in the US, but at the primary level you've got Balkanization that's going to have negative consequences 10-20 years from now.

SS: Science is attacked by right because of its challenge to faith, and by the left because it's elitist.

BR: There has been a bipartisan failure of vision over the funding of science; since then, generally science funding has not kept up with inflation. This is going to accelerate the decline of the American economy and hegemony.

LS: Over next 30-40 years, regardless of the politics, the "accounting vise" is going to destroy science: there just won't be enough money to support scientific research.

BR: Europeans are dealing with the same pensions, entitlements, and aging problems, but science isn't hurting as much: they're not squeezing down on the engine of innovation the way we are.

ML: Is the money just going into black buckets?

LS: I've got as much access to homeland security $$$ as anyone, and there's not a lot of it-- at the same time, DARPA has retrenched, NSF is shrinking, the competition for federal money is getting a lot tighter.

JL: Other countries are viewing it as a strategic resource in a way that the U.S. no longer does.

SS: At the same time, we're a more open system that rewards innovation and moves people up faster.

VS: Best biomedical researches are being funded privately-- Hughes, Wellcome want innovation both in the lab and in the way science is done.

JL: Traditionally, UK has been a gateway between the Continent; that's a strength that will only become more important. But there's divisive multiculturalism in higher education, changes in funding criteria nad the funding bureaucracy (in an EU funding thing, there was an explicit preference political over scientific criteria).

LS: In my personal creativity space, I've done more in the last 5 years than in the rest of my life. Lack of federal funding, public interest, university support, is not a problem.