12th September 2007, 10:09 PM
Incidentally, this is why people saying "we should only invest in useful applications of science" are shooting themselves in the foot. If you asked the Queen of England ages ago before television to tell a bunch of scientists to create a network whereby images of her and audio of her proclimations would appear before everyone in the kingdom, and money was NO object, they couldn't do it. No, it took funding the research of peculiar and seemingly impractical stuff to set the groundwork that could later lead to such devices.
You can't just tell someone "invent this" or "cure cancer now". No, the most you can say is "using currently existing technology, build this", not "make new technology". It takes funding research into some weird buzzing, or prisms making hot spots next to their rainbows, or noting an arc second difference in the location of Mercury that (and literally in those examples) leads to practical solutions. Screw economics 101.
You can't just tell someone "invent this" or "cure cancer now". No, the most you can say is "using currently existing technology, build this", not "make new technology". It takes funding research into some weird buzzing, or prisms making hot spots next to their rainbows, or noting an arc second difference in the location of Mercury that (and literally in those examples) leads to practical solutions. Screw economics 101.
"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." ~ Charles Babbage (1791-1871)