<nettime> need for government support for fundamental research

[ronda@umcc.ais.org (Ronda Hauben)]

A comment to Dave Farber's IP List:

Dave

>I want to give a strong second to Chucks comments djf

good to see Chuck Brownstein's comments on your list.


>>Date: Tue, 6 Jun 2000 11:40:07 -0400 To: farber@cis.upenn.edu From:
>>Charles Brownstein <cbrownst@cnri.reston.va.us>
>>>
>>Dave, I have glanced through the report and found it generally quite
>>good.
>>
>>A truly astounding bit of blindness to the obvious however, is in the
>>sections on R&D and on "Why here and now".
>>>
>>Is the Dept of Commerce the LAST bastion of ignorance about the
>>government investments in fundamental and applied research - as
>>opposed to "development" (the bulk of industry's R&D spending), with
>>its available knowledge and human resource creation?
>>
>>Today the US has the benefit of 30 years of such investment as a
>>foundation for damn near everything critical in this sector,  people
>>and technologies alike. I suppose it will take economists, the way
>>they lag reality, a long time to document this very fragile
>>advantage.

The paper I have been working on documents how there was an
understanding in the US and in the US Congress as well about the
importance of basic research and what happened to that understanding.

Probably there is a need to review the history of ARPA and the
Information Processing Techniques Office (IPTO) at ARPA to have the
lesson sink in of where the important ICT developments of our present
time have come from.

I have begun doing that in the 5 parts thus far of the draft paper I am
working on.

It does seem this is needed research for the US government to be able
to understand the current ICT achievements.

 Computer Science and the Role of Government in Creating the Internet:
ARPA/IPTO (1962-1986) Creating the Needed Interface by Ronda Hauben
rh120@columbia.edu

part I  http://www.columbia.edu/~rh120/other/arpa_ipto.txt part II
http://www.columbia.edu/~rh120/other/basicresearch.txt part III
http://www.columbia.edu/~rh120/other/centers-excellence.txt part IV
http://www.columbia.edu/~rh120/other/computer-communications.txt part V
http://www.columbia.edu/~rh120/other/birth_internet.txt


I welcome comments on this research and a chance to discuss it and its
implications with all who are interested.

Ronda

ronda@panix.com ronda@ais.org

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