1 00:00:00,090 --> 00:00:02,430 The following content is provided under a Creative 2 00:00:02,430 --> 00:00:03,820 Commons license. 3 00:00:03,820 --> 00:00:06,030 Your support will help MIT OpenCourseWare 4 00:00:06,030 --> 00:00:10,120 continue to offer high-quality educational resources for free. 5 00:00:10,120 --> 00:00:12,660 To make a donation or to view additional materials 6 00:00:12,660 --> 00:00:16,620 from hundreds of MIT courses, visit MIT OpenCourseWare 7 00:00:16,620 --> 00:00:17,990 at ocw.mit.edu. 8 00:00:21,700 --> 00:00:22,950 WILLIAM BONVILLIAN: All right. 9 00:00:22,950 --> 00:00:29,850 This is Vannevar Bush, and I had you read The Endless Frontier, 10 00:00:29,850 --> 00:00:33,690 which is maybe the most important 11 00:00:33,690 --> 00:00:37,990 organizational document in US science. 12 00:00:37,990 --> 00:00:39,580 Vannevar Bush-- fascinating figure. 13 00:00:42,360 --> 00:00:44,610 This is his-- 14 00:00:44,610 --> 00:00:49,710 He's considered one of the first great computer scientists, 15 00:00:49,710 --> 00:00:58,200 and he creates this amazing device in a room 16 00:00:58,200 --> 00:01:02,910 that essentially functions as a computer that 17 00:01:02,910 --> 00:01:05,970 can do, fascinatingly enough, differential equations. 18 00:01:05,970 --> 00:01:09,480 And it's room size, and it consists 19 00:01:09,480 --> 00:01:11,940 of these rods and brass knobs. 20 00:01:11,940 --> 00:01:16,438 And you spend a day setting up what you want to do, 21 00:01:16,438 --> 00:01:17,730 and then you adjust everything. 22 00:01:17,730 --> 00:01:20,490 And then, you've got the answer. 23 00:01:20,490 --> 00:01:22,290 It's not what I'd call high speed, 24 00:01:22,290 --> 00:01:24,660 but conceptually, computer scientists 25 00:01:24,660 --> 00:01:28,510 view this as right up there with what Babbage thought of and so 26 00:01:28,510 --> 00:01:29,010 forth. 27 00:01:29,010 --> 00:01:31,650 It's an absolutely foundational tool 28 00:01:31,650 --> 00:01:33,950 in developing modern computing. 29 00:01:33,950 --> 00:01:37,920 Vannevar Bush is a professor of engineering at MIT. 30 00:01:37,920 --> 00:01:40,950 He understands industry. 31 00:01:40,950 --> 00:01:43,980 He was a founder of Raytheon. 32 00:01:43,980 --> 00:01:47,610 He obviously understood vacuum tubes, 33 00:01:47,610 --> 00:01:49,830 because Raytheon was an early builder 34 00:01:49,830 --> 00:01:55,100 of vacuum tubes for a lot of radio communication. 35 00:01:55,100 --> 00:01:58,190 But he decided he didn't trust vacuum tubes. 36 00:01:58,190 --> 00:02:00,230 They were too fallible. 37 00:02:00,230 --> 00:02:05,300 So when he put his differential analyzer together, 38 00:02:05,300 --> 00:02:07,702 he uses these weird rods and knobs. 39 00:02:07,702 --> 00:02:08,660 Here he is, by the way. 40 00:02:08,660 --> 00:02:11,840 I think that's Frank Compton with Vannevar Bush. 41 00:02:11,840 --> 00:02:15,620 In the course of war, World War II, he becomes, in effect, 42 00:02:15,620 --> 00:02:18,000 Mr. Science. 43 00:02:18,000 --> 00:02:22,580 Here he is at the ultimate point of fame in that time period, 44 00:02:22,580 --> 00:02:25,370 on the cover of Time magazine. 45 00:02:25,370 --> 00:02:28,700 But he's viewed as the mobilizer of the US science system. 46 00:02:28,700 --> 00:02:32,560 And day after day, year after year, 47 00:02:32,560 --> 00:02:35,200 it's just a series of "wow" moments for the American public 48 00:02:35,200 --> 00:02:37,990 as these scientific advances come onto play, 49 00:02:37,990 --> 00:02:41,560 from radar to atomic power. 50 00:02:41,560 --> 00:02:46,800 And it's a remarkable story. 51 00:02:46,800 --> 00:02:51,850 So he's quite close to Franklin Roosevelt. 52 00:02:51,850 --> 00:02:55,020 He sees the entire system being dismantled 53 00:02:55,020 --> 00:02:57,480 at the end of World War II. 54 00:02:57,480 --> 00:03:00,870 So he persuades Roosevelt-- 55 00:03:00,870 --> 00:03:02,658 let's hang onto something. 56 00:03:02,658 --> 00:03:04,200 Everybody thinks world peace is going 57 00:03:04,200 --> 00:03:08,208 to break out and be enduring, and that the US 58 00:03:08,208 --> 00:03:10,000 military machine is going to be dismantled. 59 00:03:10,000 --> 00:03:12,630 Everybody's going to come home from overseas, 60 00:03:12,630 --> 00:03:17,460 and we'll go back to essentially having no army. 61 00:03:17,460 --> 00:03:19,650 That's what lies ahead, and Vannevar Bush 62 00:03:19,650 --> 00:03:21,810 realizes what amazing stuff has been 63 00:03:21,810 --> 00:03:25,380 accomplished in the scientific world in the course of the war. 64 00:03:25,380 --> 00:03:29,070 So he persuades Franklin Roosevelt. 65 00:03:29,070 --> 00:03:31,860 Let's hang on to some of it. 66 00:03:31,860 --> 00:03:38,880 And Franklin Roosevelt writes to Bush saying, essentially, 67 00:03:38,880 --> 00:03:39,517 three things. 68 00:03:39,517 --> 00:03:41,100 How do we diffuse scientific knowledge 69 00:03:41,100 --> 00:03:42,225 that's gained from the war? 70 00:03:42,225 --> 00:03:45,600 How do we organize scientific knowledge, particularly 71 00:03:45,600 --> 00:03:46,740 a war against disease? 72 00:03:46,740 --> 00:03:49,140 And what's the governmental role in supporting science 73 00:03:49,140 --> 00:03:50,842 and private sector research? 74 00:03:50,842 --> 00:03:52,050 Essentially, these questions. 75 00:03:52,050 --> 00:03:54,660 Probably, Vannevar Bush wrote the draft 76 00:03:54,660 --> 00:03:57,180 for Franklin Roosevelt to send back to him. 77 00:03:57,180 --> 00:04:00,832 That's probably-- this is government. 78 00:04:00,832 --> 00:04:02,040 That's probably what happens. 79 00:04:05,070 --> 00:04:08,340 He calls his work Science, The Endless Frontier, 80 00:04:08,340 --> 00:04:11,670 and he's appealing to a very interesting historical strain 81 00:04:11,670 --> 00:04:13,260 here. 82 00:04:13,260 --> 00:04:16,110 So one of the great historians of the first half 83 00:04:16,110 --> 00:04:18,839 of the 20th century was named Vernon Parrington. 84 00:04:18,839 --> 00:04:21,510 And Parrington writes about the end 85 00:04:21,510 --> 00:04:25,920 of the frontier and its effect on American history 86 00:04:25,920 --> 00:04:27,510 and American society and culture. 87 00:04:27,510 --> 00:04:30,600 And his point is that one of the things that's 88 00:04:30,600 --> 00:04:34,830 very different about America is that 89 00:04:34,830 --> 00:04:41,220 the structured, class-ridden society breaks down 90 00:04:41,220 --> 00:04:43,530 in American history at the frontier. 91 00:04:43,530 --> 00:04:45,060 And of course, the entire country 92 00:04:45,060 --> 00:04:48,720 is a series of advancing frontiers, historically. 93 00:04:48,720 --> 00:04:51,420 And that that's the change agent that 94 00:04:51,420 --> 00:04:55,020 creates the kind of dynamism in American society, 95 00:04:55,020 --> 00:04:58,680 and that deep sense of equality that's lurking there. 96 00:04:58,680 --> 00:05:03,540 And when the frontier is officially declared ended, 97 00:05:03,540 --> 00:05:07,440 like in 1900, it's a big moment. 98 00:05:07,440 --> 00:05:09,240 Because what's the frontier dynamic 99 00:05:09,240 --> 00:05:12,840 going to be that's going to keep our society 100 00:05:12,840 --> 00:05:15,840 driving towards new things, if we don't 101 00:05:15,840 --> 00:05:18,390 have the frontier anymore? 102 00:05:18,390 --> 00:05:20,880 So what Bush is arguing, in this very interesting 103 00:05:20,880 --> 00:05:25,820 historical sense, is science is the frontier. 104 00:05:25,820 --> 00:05:28,430 And science, by the way, is not going to end. 105 00:05:28,430 --> 00:05:30,380 It's an endless frontier. 106 00:05:30,380 --> 00:05:33,320 So it's a very interesting appeal 107 00:05:33,320 --> 00:05:35,210 to a kind of American sensibility. 108 00:05:38,230 --> 00:05:42,290 So his paper actually comes out in July, 1945. 109 00:05:42,290 --> 00:05:45,640 Franklin Roosevelt had died the previous April. 110 00:05:45,640 --> 00:05:48,520 So it's presented to Harry Truman. 111 00:05:51,130 --> 00:05:56,890 And Bush is thinking through the post-war model for US science 112 00:05:56,890 --> 00:05:58,432 and its-- 113 00:05:58,432 --> 00:06:02,000 the association-less model dominates World War II. 114 00:06:02,000 --> 00:06:05,520 It's public-private collaboration, for sure, 115 00:06:05,520 --> 00:06:08,550 as Max pointed out. 116 00:06:08,550 --> 00:06:11,730 In this document, Bush disaggregates science. 117 00:06:14,240 --> 00:06:16,875 He separates it back out. 118 00:06:16,875 --> 00:06:18,000 And we'll talk in a minute. 119 00:06:18,000 --> 00:06:20,900 We'll talk a little bit later about why 120 00:06:20,900 --> 00:06:22,490 he went in that direction. 121 00:06:22,490 --> 00:06:28,690 But he essentially argues, OK, American taxpayers. 122 00:06:28,690 --> 00:06:31,380 Invest in science, and you're going 123 00:06:31,380 --> 00:06:33,730 to get some really big things. 124 00:06:33,730 --> 00:06:37,160 And he essentially argues for four of these. 125 00:06:37,160 --> 00:06:39,820 So as everything's being dismantled after World War II, 126 00:06:39,820 --> 00:06:45,580 he argues, let's keep investment in basic research. 127 00:06:45,580 --> 00:06:47,110 That's his case. 128 00:06:47,110 --> 00:06:49,720 And if you invest, American taxpayer, in basic research, 129 00:06:49,720 --> 00:06:51,246 here's what you're going to get. 130 00:06:51,246 --> 00:06:57,190 One-- you're going to get a war against disease. 131 00:06:57,190 --> 00:07:01,600 Roosevelt, Bush, many others had seen 132 00:07:01,600 --> 00:07:05,980 the power of the development of antibiotics 133 00:07:05,980 --> 00:07:10,150 in the course of World War II, which really scale up. 134 00:07:10,150 --> 00:07:12,850 World War II is the first war where people actually 135 00:07:12,850 --> 00:07:16,030 died in combat as opposed to disease. 136 00:07:16,030 --> 00:07:19,210 The death rate in the armies of World War II 137 00:07:19,210 --> 00:07:23,080 is far lower than in all previous wars. 138 00:07:23,080 --> 00:07:24,790 It's very dramatic, and that war is 139 00:07:24,790 --> 00:07:30,130 being fought in some very tricky regions that 140 00:07:30,130 --> 00:07:32,950 are quite disease-prone. 141 00:07:32,950 --> 00:07:35,800 And the antibiotics just dramatically 142 00:07:35,800 --> 00:07:38,410 reduce the death rate from disease. 143 00:07:38,410 --> 00:07:41,815 So they saw how a governmental effort 144 00:07:41,815 --> 00:07:44,440 of supporting that science, and then supporting the production, 145 00:07:44,440 --> 00:07:48,460 and then distributing it, could create a war-- 146 00:07:51,107 --> 00:07:52,690 pneumonia had been the biggest killer. 147 00:07:52,690 --> 00:07:54,160 It was number one, right? 148 00:07:54,160 --> 00:07:56,610 And that dramatically goes down after World War II. 149 00:07:56,610 --> 00:07:59,410 It has a huge effect. 150 00:07:59,410 --> 00:08:03,340 So they saw the possibility of investing in science. 151 00:08:03,340 --> 00:08:05,680 You'll get a war on disease. 152 00:08:05,680 --> 00:08:09,030 It's a pretty powerful argument. 153 00:08:09,030 --> 00:08:11,530 Now, the next argument, they didn't have to sell to anybody, 154 00:08:11,530 --> 00:08:14,030 because everybody understood it as a result of World War II. 155 00:08:14,030 --> 00:08:18,730 Invest in science, you get national security. 156 00:08:18,730 --> 00:08:21,310 And the Cold War hadn't started at this phase. 157 00:08:21,310 --> 00:08:23,530 It's got another four or five years before people 158 00:08:23,530 --> 00:08:27,160 will realize it's on them. 159 00:08:27,160 --> 00:08:32,740 But he makes this argument, and it falls on receptive ears, 160 00:08:32,740 --> 00:08:34,990 because people understand how powerful radar is. 161 00:08:34,990 --> 00:08:38,740 People understand how powerful nuclear power is and so forth. 162 00:08:38,740 --> 00:08:43,360 The transformation of technology was dramatic in the war. 163 00:08:43,360 --> 00:08:47,230 The third argument is an intriguing one. 164 00:08:47,230 --> 00:08:49,330 American taxpayer, invest in science, 165 00:08:49,330 --> 00:08:52,930 and you will get what Vannevar Bush calls public welfare. 166 00:08:52,930 --> 00:08:55,360 What's he talking about? 167 00:08:55,360 --> 00:08:57,340 The big anxiety at the end of World War II 168 00:08:57,340 --> 00:08:59,350 is, we've got these 16 million people overseas. 169 00:08:59,350 --> 00:09:00,850 They're going to come out of uniform 170 00:09:00,850 --> 00:09:02,892 and they're going to come back the United States. 171 00:09:02,892 --> 00:09:04,960 And we're dismantling all wartime spending, which 172 00:09:04,960 --> 00:09:06,850 is most of government spending. 173 00:09:06,850 --> 00:09:08,860 And we're dismantling the war machine. 174 00:09:08,860 --> 00:09:11,340 We're going to have another Great Depression. 175 00:09:11,340 --> 00:09:13,470 That's what everybody thinks. 176 00:09:13,470 --> 00:09:15,120 And you can see why. 177 00:09:15,120 --> 00:09:18,240 What are these 16 million people going to do? 178 00:09:18,240 --> 00:09:21,570 And we're dismantling all these industries. 179 00:09:21,570 --> 00:09:29,140 So Bush is arguing, we're going to get full employment. 180 00:09:29,140 --> 00:09:31,960 And he's going after this big post-war anxiety 181 00:09:31,960 --> 00:09:36,760 about where these returning vets are going to be employed. 182 00:09:36,760 --> 00:09:41,380 And so he argues that essentially, science 183 00:09:41,380 --> 00:09:47,690 creates innovation, and that the innovation 184 00:09:47,690 --> 00:09:48,990 is going to drive the economy. 185 00:09:48,990 --> 00:09:51,650 All these new technologies are going to be at hand. 186 00:09:51,650 --> 00:09:57,890 Fascinatingly, we do get a huge dividend 187 00:09:57,890 --> 00:10:00,440 from all the scientific and technological advances that 188 00:10:00,440 --> 00:10:03,140 occurred during the war, and we create a whole series 189 00:10:03,140 --> 00:10:07,820 of new industries coming out of the war, and it actually works. 190 00:10:07,820 --> 00:10:09,500 And just in case there was any doubt 191 00:10:09,500 --> 00:10:13,370 about what to do with those 16 million veterans, 192 00:10:13,370 --> 00:10:15,180 we had to park them somewhere. 193 00:10:15,180 --> 00:10:19,400 So we create the GI bill, and we send them to universities, 194 00:10:19,400 --> 00:10:20,900 and they get degrees. 195 00:10:20,900 --> 00:10:23,690 So they take, actually, pretty interesting technical training 196 00:10:23,690 --> 00:10:26,960 they got in the military, and then greatly enhance it. 197 00:10:26,960 --> 00:10:30,920 So we've got a very strong technical pool of talent 198 00:10:30,920 --> 00:10:31,880 entering the economy. 199 00:10:31,880 --> 00:10:34,040 And this huge burst-- 200 00:10:34,040 --> 00:10:35,840 it's pure Romer right? 201 00:10:35,840 --> 00:10:37,820 And there we go. 202 00:10:37,820 --> 00:10:41,570 We get this incredible post-war economic growth time 203 00:10:41,570 --> 00:10:45,380 period that really lasts until about 1970. 204 00:10:45,380 --> 00:10:47,975 The fourth argument is, nurture talent-- 205 00:10:47,975 --> 00:10:49,490 a Romer-like argument. 206 00:10:49,490 --> 00:10:51,800 His point is that there's going to be 207 00:10:51,800 --> 00:10:55,100 a governmental role in the other three items, 208 00:10:55,100 --> 00:10:57,320 but there's got to be a governmental role in backing 209 00:10:57,320 --> 00:10:59,083 this talent base up. 210 00:10:59,083 --> 00:11:01,250 There's going to be a governmental role in educating 211 00:11:01,250 --> 00:11:03,750 scientific talent at scale. 212 00:11:03,750 --> 00:11:09,790 So Bush has got what we can call a "pipeline" 213 00:11:09,790 --> 00:11:12,640 theory of innovation. 214 00:11:12,640 --> 00:11:13,990 Here's a pipeline. 215 00:11:13,990 --> 00:11:15,760 We've talked about this before. 216 00:11:15,760 --> 00:11:17,860 The government will dump basic research 217 00:11:17,860 --> 00:11:19,390 in at the end of the pipeline. 218 00:11:19,390 --> 00:11:22,150 Mysterious things will occur in the pipeline, 219 00:11:22,150 --> 00:11:24,040 and great technologies, products, 220 00:11:24,040 --> 00:11:26,350 and a fabulous economy will emerge at the end. 221 00:11:26,350 --> 00:11:29,050 That's the vision, right? 222 00:11:29,050 --> 00:11:32,260 That's his conceptual framework. 223 00:11:32,260 --> 00:11:34,900 That's what he's arguing for. 224 00:11:34,900 --> 00:11:39,310 This vision of the governmental role in basic research 225 00:11:39,310 --> 00:11:42,960 dominates US scientific thinking to this day. 226 00:11:42,960 --> 00:11:45,060 This is where it came from. 227 00:11:45,060 --> 00:11:47,100 Why? 228 00:11:47,100 --> 00:11:48,925 What is he up to here? 229 00:11:48,925 --> 00:11:49,800 Why is he doing this? 230 00:11:49,800 --> 00:11:51,900 Because in the course of World War II, 231 00:11:51,900 --> 00:11:55,230 he created this incredibly connected scientific system 232 00:11:55,230 --> 00:11:59,850 with unbelievable results, where industry and government 233 00:11:59,850 --> 00:12:02,910 and universities were deeply connected with each other-- 234 00:12:02,910 --> 00:12:04,740 a highly connected system. 235 00:12:04,740 --> 00:12:07,657 And at the end of the war, he pulls that model apart 236 00:12:07,657 --> 00:12:09,240 and says, the governmental role is not 237 00:12:09,240 --> 00:12:10,615 going to be this connected stuff. 238 00:12:10,615 --> 00:12:12,840 It's going to be basic research. 239 00:12:12,840 --> 00:12:15,810 What's he thinking? 240 00:12:15,810 --> 00:12:17,700 Interestingly, he's the person who 241 00:12:17,700 --> 00:12:20,430 created the two most fundamental scientific organizational 242 00:12:20,430 --> 00:12:21,360 models in US history. 243 00:12:21,360 --> 00:12:22,590 He does them both, right? 244 00:12:22,590 --> 00:12:25,920 They're contradictory, but he does them both. 245 00:12:25,920 --> 00:12:27,300 What's he thinking about? 246 00:12:27,300 --> 00:12:32,820 Well, to some extent, I think he was influenced by his physicist 247 00:12:32,820 --> 00:12:34,530 friends. 248 00:12:34,530 --> 00:12:38,220 And physics comes out of World War II-- 249 00:12:38,220 --> 00:12:41,820 people like Oppenheimer and the Los Alamos project-- 250 00:12:41,820 --> 00:12:47,640 with this huge concern about, what have we done? 251 00:12:47,640 --> 00:12:51,000 We've been hell bent to create atomic weapons, 252 00:12:51,000 --> 00:12:52,980 and then we don't use them against Germany, 253 00:12:52,980 --> 00:12:54,052 because the war is ended. 254 00:12:54,052 --> 00:12:55,510 But then we use them against Japan. 255 00:12:55,510 --> 00:12:57,052 And did we really think this through? 256 00:12:57,052 --> 00:12:57,970 And what does it mean? 257 00:12:57,970 --> 00:13:00,300 What does it mean to have unleashed 258 00:13:00,300 --> 00:13:04,532 this unbelievable new force into the world's 259 00:13:04,532 --> 00:13:05,490 political environments? 260 00:13:05,490 --> 00:13:07,320 Are they ready for it? 261 00:13:07,320 --> 00:13:11,100 So people like Oppenheimer go through a huge rethink. 262 00:13:11,100 --> 00:13:13,080 A lot of the physics community does this. 263 00:13:13,080 --> 00:13:16,650 Have we been too closely tied to a military industrial complex? 264 00:13:16,650 --> 00:13:19,410 As Eisenhower would put it later. 265 00:13:19,410 --> 00:13:23,450 So Oppenheimer is a close friend of Vannevar Bush. 266 00:13:23,450 --> 00:13:26,180 Bush testifies for him when Oppenheimer's security 267 00:13:26,180 --> 00:13:29,970 clearance is pulled later on in the Cold 268 00:13:29,970 --> 00:13:34,800 War, which was pretty nervy. 269 00:13:34,800 --> 00:13:36,620 He's influenced to some extent by that, 270 00:13:36,620 --> 00:13:38,450 but he's not naive about politics. 271 00:13:38,450 --> 00:13:41,660 He understands the importance of national security, 272 00:13:41,660 --> 00:13:43,700 and he's an advisor to the Defense 273 00:13:43,700 --> 00:13:46,880 Department in the immediate postwar period. 274 00:13:49,750 --> 00:13:53,260 I think part of it is just practical reality. 275 00:13:53,260 --> 00:13:55,000 The federal government is radically 276 00:13:55,000 --> 00:13:57,810 decreasing its budget. 277 00:13:57,810 --> 00:14:01,530 The cheapest stage is investing in early stage research. 278 00:14:01,530 --> 00:14:04,770 That's much cheaper than applied research or development. 279 00:14:04,770 --> 00:14:07,450 Let's hang onto that. 280 00:14:07,450 --> 00:14:10,090 And we created the federally-funded research 281 00:14:10,090 --> 00:14:10,640 university. 282 00:14:10,640 --> 00:14:13,420 That's an amazing creation. 283 00:14:13,420 --> 00:14:16,510 Let's be satisfied with having done that one, 284 00:14:16,510 --> 00:14:19,210 and keep that option on the table. 285 00:14:19,210 --> 00:14:21,100 I think that's a fair amount of his thinking. 286 00:14:21,100 --> 00:14:24,940 He's being really quite practical. 287 00:14:24,940 --> 00:14:28,243 But he is trying to remove science from the fray. 288 00:14:28,243 --> 00:14:30,160 He was very concerned in the course of the war 289 00:14:30,160 --> 00:14:33,280 by science becoming politicized. 290 00:14:33,280 --> 00:14:36,610 Decisions about where to put defense laboratories 291 00:14:36,610 --> 00:14:39,160 were based on regional and local politics 292 00:14:39,160 --> 00:14:42,640 that Franklin Roosevelt was a master of. 293 00:14:42,640 --> 00:14:45,370 Building consensus in different political regions 294 00:14:45,370 --> 00:14:50,380 and putting big research centers in places like Tennessee 295 00:14:50,380 --> 00:14:56,530 had logic, but also political logic, as well. 296 00:14:56,530 --> 00:14:57,850 And Bush didn't want that. 297 00:14:57,850 --> 00:15:01,600 Bush wanted science out of the politics. 298 00:15:01,600 --> 00:15:06,980 He wanted to really separate the political system. 299 00:15:06,980 --> 00:15:13,270 So this is his vision for postwar science. 300 00:15:13,270 --> 00:15:17,350 And by and large, it becomes the case. 301 00:15:17,350 --> 00:15:21,760 So let's-- let me do Blanpied's piece just very quickly-- 302 00:15:21,760 --> 00:15:24,820 just a couple of minutes. 303 00:15:24,820 --> 00:15:28,210 He writes the early history of NSF. 304 00:15:28,210 --> 00:15:32,640 So Vannevar Bush's design at the end of the war is-- 305 00:15:32,640 --> 00:15:36,910 essentially, during the war, he had the NRDC and the OSRD, 306 00:15:36,910 --> 00:15:41,280 two organizing committees for US science. 307 00:15:41,280 --> 00:15:44,730 And basically, that's probably the only time 308 00:15:44,730 --> 00:15:48,330 that we had pretty centralized science in the United States. 309 00:15:48,330 --> 00:15:49,920 But when Vannevar Bush ends the war, 310 00:15:49,920 --> 00:15:52,170 he wants to do the same thing. 311 00:15:52,170 --> 00:15:53,910 He wants to create one tent. 312 00:15:53,910 --> 00:15:55,920 So he has this vision of why to do science 313 00:15:55,920 --> 00:15:57,090 in The Endless Frontier. 314 00:15:57,090 --> 00:15:59,100 Then he has an organizational model, 315 00:15:59,100 --> 00:16:01,110 and he wants to create this National Science 316 00:16:01,110 --> 00:16:04,710 Foundation as the tent for all of US science. 317 00:16:04,710 --> 00:16:06,870 It's all going to go in there. 318 00:16:06,870 --> 00:16:08,260 It's going to be flexible. 319 00:16:08,260 --> 00:16:10,230 It's going to be loosely organized. 320 00:16:10,230 --> 00:16:13,800 It's not going to be terribly hierarchical. 321 00:16:13,800 --> 00:16:16,710 It'll be somewhat like what he was 322 00:16:16,710 --> 00:16:19,110 doing in the course of the war, but that's 323 00:16:19,110 --> 00:16:21,380 what it's going to be. 324 00:16:21,380 --> 00:16:24,950 And something happens. 325 00:16:24,950 --> 00:16:28,130 He writes up this legislation to create this one 326 00:16:28,130 --> 00:16:32,480 tent for all of US science, and what became known as NSF. 327 00:16:32,480 --> 00:16:34,580 And it runs into this guy. 328 00:16:34,580 --> 00:16:36,110 So that's Harry Truman. 329 00:16:36,110 --> 00:16:38,460 And you'll notice on the corner of the desk-- 330 00:16:38,460 --> 00:16:40,310 it's just a little statement here 331 00:16:40,310 --> 00:16:45,930 that says, "The buck stops here," in italics letters, 332 00:16:45,930 --> 00:16:46,430 right? 333 00:16:46,430 --> 00:16:48,860 It stops on Harry Truman's desk. 334 00:16:48,860 --> 00:16:50,660 So Vannevar Bush wrote up and got 335 00:16:50,660 --> 00:16:56,360 Congress to pass his National Science Foundation bill. 336 00:16:56,360 --> 00:16:59,360 And much to everybody's total amazement, 337 00:16:59,360 --> 00:17:02,770 Harry Truman gets it, and he reads it, 338 00:17:02,770 --> 00:17:06,940 and he realizes that the buck is not stopping on Harry Truman's 339 00:17:06,940 --> 00:17:07,869 desk for science. 340 00:17:07,869 --> 00:17:09,790 It's stopping on Vannevar Bush, and a bunch 341 00:17:09,790 --> 00:17:13,480 of scientific elite types will control science, 342 00:17:13,480 --> 00:17:19,359 out of political control of the president. 343 00:17:19,359 --> 00:17:25,599 Harry Truman, not unreasonably, says it's unconstitutional. 344 00:17:25,599 --> 00:17:26,650 We can't. 345 00:17:26,650 --> 00:17:28,180 This is an executive branch agency. 346 00:17:28,180 --> 00:17:31,660 The president ultimately needs responsibility. 347 00:17:31,660 --> 00:17:33,160 I'm not going to mess these guys up. 348 00:17:33,160 --> 00:17:37,570 I like science, but it belongs to me. 349 00:17:37,570 --> 00:17:42,680 So he vetoes the National Science Foundation Act. 350 00:17:42,680 --> 00:17:45,710 He's influenced by a very interesting guy named 351 00:17:45,710 --> 00:17:48,500 John Steelman who's from a smaller college, 352 00:17:48,500 --> 00:17:51,680 but he's effectively a science advisor. 353 00:17:51,680 --> 00:17:55,600 So Vannevar Bush and Harry Truman, they 354 00:17:55,600 --> 00:17:57,850 didn't get along very well. 355 00:17:57,850 --> 00:18:00,160 Harry Truman, high school educated, 356 00:18:00,160 --> 00:18:01,285 never got to go to college. 357 00:18:01,285 --> 00:18:03,040 He was too poor to go to college. 358 00:18:03,040 --> 00:18:04,990 Very smart guy. 359 00:18:04,990 --> 00:18:06,880 He's an artillery captain in World War I, 360 00:18:06,880 --> 00:18:08,890 and a very successful one. 361 00:18:08,890 --> 00:18:14,290 And artillery commanders in World War I are the smartest. 362 00:18:14,290 --> 00:18:15,880 You've got to understand ballistics 363 00:18:15,880 --> 00:18:18,140 and all kinds of complicated mathematics, 364 00:18:18,140 --> 00:18:21,550 and Harry Truman is very smart. 365 00:18:21,550 --> 00:18:23,250 So not a dumb guy. 366 00:18:23,250 --> 00:18:26,725 A very talented guy, and became a highly-respected-- criticized 367 00:18:26,725 --> 00:18:28,810 a lot, but became a highly-respected president, 368 00:18:28,810 --> 00:18:30,580 particularly in retrospect. 369 00:18:30,580 --> 00:18:32,830 So there's no putting this guy down, 370 00:18:32,830 --> 00:18:35,320 but he just didn't get along with this kind of Boston 371 00:18:35,320 --> 00:18:40,010 Brahmin Vannevar Bush type. 372 00:18:40,010 --> 00:18:44,215 And not that Vannevar Bush was part of Boston society. 373 00:18:44,215 --> 00:18:44,780 He wasn't. 374 00:18:44,780 --> 00:18:46,590 He was from a lower middle class family, 375 00:18:46,590 --> 00:18:53,900 and his father was a minister, but they didn't get along. 376 00:18:53,900 --> 00:18:59,290 Bush got along really well with Franklin Roosevelt. 377 00:18:59,290 --> 00:19:00,808 Not nearly as well-- 378 00:19:00,808 --> 00:19:02,350 really, not at all with Harry Truman. 379 00:19:02,350 --> 00:19:03,495 So they're at loggerheads. 380 00:19:03,495 --> 00:19:04,870 Vannevar Bush is getting Congress 381 00:19:04,870 --> 00:19:07,810 to pass this without, really, Harry Truman being involved. 382 00:19:07,810 --> 00:19:10,210 Harry Truman's got his own advisor, John Steelman. 383 00:19:10,210 --> 00:19:14,050 And they have a very different idea 384 00:19:14,050 --> 00:19:16,250 of how science can be organized. 385 00:19:16,250 --> 00:19:18,970 There's going to be a lot more applied work, 386 00:19:18,970 --> 00:19:22,050 and it's going to be much more associationalist 387 00:19:22,050 --> 00:19:23,710 is their vision. 388 00:19:23,710 --> 00:19:28,930 So the NSF bill gets vetoed, and NSF 389 00:19:28,930 --> 00:19:33,160 doesn't get authorized for another five years. 390 00:19:36,540 --> 00:19:40,040 So meanwhile, time doesn't stand still. 391 00:19:40,040 --> 00:19:45,790 This is why we have this very decentralized science agency 392 00:19:45,790 --> 00:19:48,700 system in the United States, because Harry Truman vetoed 393 00:19:48,700 --> 00:19:51,220 the National Science bill. 394 00:19:51,220 --> 00:19:54,670 All these other agencies are popping up, 395 00:19:54,670 --> 00:19:56,440 because there's jobs that have to be done. 396 00:19:56,440 --> 00:19:59,740 So the Office of Naval Research gets created 397 00:19:59,740 --> 00:20:02,830 in the Defense Department. 398 00:20:02,830 --> 00:20:06,670 The great energy, nuclear weapons laboratories, 399 00:20:06,670 --> 00:20:13,090 Los Alamos, and later, Sandia and Livermore and so forth-- 400 00:20:13,090 --> 00:20:16,250 they all get created because the atomic mission is there, 401 00:20:16,250 --> 00:20:19,690 and that has to be dealt with, and they need science for that. 402 00:20:19,690 --> 00:20:22,030 So what later becomes the Department of Energy Lab 403 00:20:22,030 --> 00:20:24,240 system is being stood up. 404 00:20:24,240 --> 00:20:26,920 Scientific support at the Atomic Energy Commission 405 00:20:26,920 --> 00:20:30,310 is being undertaken to support nuclear research. 406 00:20:30,310 --> 00:20:32,020 The National Institute of Health, 407 00:20:32,020 --> 00:20:36,490 which is a little public health research agency 408 00:20:36,490 --> 00:20:38,380 benefits more than wartime advances 409 00:20:38,380 --> 00:20:40,192 in science and medicine. 410 00:20:40,192 --> 00:20:42,400 That becomes the National Institutes of Health that's 411 00:20:42,400 --> 00:20:44,500 now the monster in the room. 412 00:20:44,500 --> 00:20:48,700 All these things are popping up, and NSF misses the boat. 413 00:20:48,700 --> 00:20:51,340 It doesn't get authorized for another five years. 414 00:20:51,340 --> 00:20:53,830 Doesn't really get stood up until Sputnik. 415 00:20:53,830 --> 00:20:57,820 It's very modestly funded, until Sputnik. 416 00:20:57,820 --> 00:21:02,140 So this is why Vannevar Bush gets his-- 417 00:21:02,140 --> 00:21:04,720 he's successful in his basic mission-- 418 00:21:04,720 --> 00:21:06,790 governmental support for research universities 419 00:21:06,790 --> 00:21:07,840 and basic research. 420 00:21:07,840 --> 00:21:10,090 He wins that battle. 421 00:21:10,090 --> 00:21:13,160 He loses this battle. 422 00:21:13,160 --> 00:21:15,590 He doesn't get science in one tent. 423 00:21:15,590 --> 00:21:19,080 And there's an ongoing, deep debate. 424 00:21:19,080 --> 00:21:21,300 Was that good? 425 00:21:21,300 --> 00:21:26,350 Are we better off with a very flexible, decentralized system 426 00:21:26,350 --> 00:21:29,680 of science agencies that are organized around all kinds 427 00:21:29,680 --> 00:21:32,210 of different missions? 428 00:21:32,210 --> 00:21:37,090 I think my view is, a lot of disagreement, that's 429 00:21:37,090 --> 00:21:38,540 probably good for us, right? 430 00:21:38,540 --> 00:21:43,180 It creates a lot of pathways of opportunities for scientists 431 00:21:43,180 --> 00:21:45,460 to pursue. 432 00:21:45,460 --> 00:21:47,140 They're not under one tent. 433 00:21:47,140 --> 00:21:48,790 They've got a lot of options about what 434 00:21:48,790 --> 00:21:52,750 they go with their research, and a lot of different missions 435 00:21:52,750 --> 00:21:55,900 converge and come to bear to support science. 436 00:21:55,900 --> 00:22:00,220 So overall, it's probably a positive, I would argue. 437 00:22:00,220 --> 00:22:05,800 But the negative is that it is impossible to organize science 438 00:22:05,800 --> 00:22:07,780 across these agencies. 439 00:22:07,780 --> 00:22:09,490 It is a nightmare. 440 00:22:09,490 --> 00:22:11,170 Getting these agencies to cooperate-- 441 00:22:11,170 --> 00:22:14,200 and again, behind them are nine appropriations subcommittees-- 442 00:22:14,200 --> 00:22:16,870 nine separate appropriations subcommittees. 443 00:22:16,870 --> 00:22:18,520 You gotta bring those folks along too. 444 00:22:18,520 --> 00:22:21,700 Good luck. 445 00:22:21,700 --> 00:22:27,190 So central coordination of R&D is 446 00:22:27,190 --> 00:22:29,980 a huge organizational challenge. 447 00:22:29,980 --> 00:22:35,680 And look, it's not as if one single agency owns NANO. 448 00:22:35,680 --> 00:22:37,412 You want to make progress on NANO? 449 00:22:37,412 --> 00:22:39,370 You've got to bring all this cast of characters 450 00:22:39,370 --> 00:22:42,010 together and get them to hammer out cooperation, 451 00:22:42,010 --> 00:22:43,450 which is very hard to do. 452 00:22:43,450 --> 00:22:46,930 High performance computing is a beneficial technology 453 00:22:46,930 --> 00:22:48,310 for all of these agencies. 454 00:22:48,310 --> 00:22:50,970 How do you get them to cooperate on that? 455 00:22:50,970 --> 00:22:53,080 These are nightmare organizational problems 456 00:22:53,080 --> 00:22:53,710 in our system. 457 00:22:53,710 --> 00:22:57,760 We finally created the Office of Science and Technology Policy 458 00:22:57,760 --> 00:23:01,900 as the coordination entity, but OSTP does not 459 00:23:01,900 --> 00:23:03,910 have budget authority. 460 00:23:03,910 --> 00:23:08,140 It doesn't really control the budgets of these agencies. 461 00:23:08,140 --> 00:23:10,510 So it can't, in the end-- 462 00:23:10,510 --> 00:23:12,310 federal government money is power. 463 00:23:12,310 --> 00:23:15,040 It doesn't have any money. 464 00:23:15,040 --> 00:23:18,070 So it works with OMB and moves things along, 465 00:23:18,070 --> 00:23:20,710 but we do not have an efficient system 466 00:23:20,710 --> 00:23:22,840 for cross-agency collaboration, which 467 00:23:22,840 --> 00:23:26,260 becomes very critical when a scientific advance will 468 00:23:26,260 --> 00:23:29,360 affect a number of the actors. 469 00:23:29,360 --> 00:23:31,815 AUDIENCE: What year was OSTP created? 470 00:23:31,815 --> 00:23:33,440 WILLIAM BONVILLIAN: Well, Vannevar Bush 471 00:23:33,440 --> 00:23:36,230 is considered the first scientific advisor. 472 00:23:36,230 --> 00:23:40,310 John Steelman is sort of considered second. 473 00:23:40,310 --> 00:23:45,320 OSTP-- Eisenhower has a science advisor, 474 00:23:45,320 --> 00:23:49,780 so Killian, MIT's president, becomes his scientific advisor. 475 00:23:49,780 --> 00:23:51,530 Jerry Wiesner, also MIT's president, 476 00:23:51,530 --> 00:23:53,900 becomes Jack Kennedy's science advisor. 477 00:23:53,900 --> 00:23:54,980 Talk about talent. 478 00:23:54,980 --> 00:23:59,330 Those are amazing characters. 479 00:23:59,330 --> 00:24:02,310 So whether it's called OSTP or not, 480 00:24:02,310 --> 00:24:04,040 there's a scientific advisory system 481 00:24:04,040 --> 00:24:07,280 that really endures, starting with Vannevar Bush, 482 00:24:07,280 --> 00:24:09,590 with the exception of a brief period of time 483 00:24:09,590 --> 00:24:12,020 when Richard Nixon got mad at scientists 484 00:24:12,020 --> 00:24:15,260 and he shuts down his scientific advisory system. 485 00:24:15,260 --> 00:24:19,010 But that gets revived under President Ford very quickly. 486 00:24:19,010 --> 00:24:20,960 So we've had a pretty continuous system. 487 00:24:20,960 --> 00:24:24,650 President Trump has not named a science advisor yet, however. 488 00:24:24,650 --> 00:24:26,435 So that chop is kind of Home Alone. 489 00:24:26,435 --> 00:24:27,440 [LAUGHTER] 490 00:24:27,440 --> 00:24:30,080 But from an organizational point of view, 491 00:24:30,080 --> 00:24:32,180 with all these disparate scientific agencies, 492 00:24:32,180 --> 00:24:35,690 you do need some coordination entity, from just a practical 493 00:24:35,690 --> 00:24:37,770 governance perspective. 494 00:24:37,770 --> 00:24:42,980 So I think that will happen over time. 495 00:24:42,980 --> 00:24:46,700 So I've forgotten what year the OSTP Act-- 496 00:24:46,700 --> 00:24:49,070 Authorization Act actually passed. 497 00:24:49,070 --> 00:24:52,760 It's got to be in the '80s, but we've effectively 498 00:24:52,760 --> 00:24:56,670 had a scientific advisory system in place since, really, 499 00:24:56,670 --> 00:24:59,870 the outset of World War II. 500 00:24:59,870 --> 00:25:01,550 All right, I'm done. 501 00:25:01,550 --> 00:25:02,950 It's yours. 502 00:25:02,950 --> 00:25:04,345 And you've got-- and yours. 503 00:25:04,345 --> 00:25:04,970 AUDIENCE: Yeah. 504 00:25:04,970 --> 00:25:05,720 So how should we-- 505 00:25:05,720 --> 00:25:06,380 I could-- 506 00:25:06,380 --> 00:25:07,520 WILLIAM BONVILLIAN: So why don't you do Bush, 507 00:25:07,520 --> 00:25:09,245 and then we'll go to Blanpied and we'll kind of-- 508 00:25:09,245 --> 00:25:09,410 AUDIENCE: Sure. 509 00:25:09,410 --> 00:25:10,920 WILLIAM BONVILLIAN: Because they're these two models. 510 00:25:10,920 --> 00:25:12,770 One is basic research support and the other 511 00:25:12,770 --> 00:25:14,425 is no single tent. 512 00:25:14,425 --> 00:25:15,050 AUDIENCE: Yeah. 513 00:25:15,050 --> 00:25:16,460 WILLIAM BONVILLIAN: That's the two issues here. 514 00:25:16,460 --> 00:25:17,480 AUDIENCE: OK. 515 00:25:17,480 --> 00:25:22,820 So regarding that single tent view, 516 00:25:22,820 --> 00:25:26,360 I've noticed that a lot of scientific research 517 00:25:26,360 --> 00:25:29,210 has had problems securing funding for long periods. 518 00:25:29,210 --> 00:25:31,220 Because often scientific research, 519 00:25:31,220 --> 00:25:35,180 by nature, is long-term, and doesn't always 520 00:25:35,180 --> 00:25:37,820 produce useful results. 521 00:25:37,820 --> 00:25:39,860 Actually, this is one of the-- 522 00:25:39,860 --> 00:25:41,240 I think Adolph Hitler, actually-- 523 00:25:41,240 --> 00:25:45,740 he tried to ban all scientific research outside of directly 524 00:25:45,740 --> 00:25:46,970 applied science. 525 00:25:46,970 --> 00:25:49,790 So he didn't want anything in quantum or anything 526 00:25:49,790 --> 00:25:52,880 weird or theoretical like that, where he could not see 527 00:25:52,880 --> 00:25:56,130 the obvious applications of it. 528 00:25:56,130 --> 00:25:59,090 So with that, I'm curious what your thoughts 529 00:25:59,090 --> 00:26:03,590 on our governmental system, and how incentives can be revised 530 00:26:03,590 --> 00:26:08,120 such that long-term scientific strategic thinking 531 00:26:08,120 --> 00:26:09,650 can take place. 532 00:26:09,650 --> 00:26:12,760 Because as it is, people have-- 533 00:26:12,760 --> 00:26:15,780 they are reelected every two, four, or six years, 534 00:26:15,780 --> 00:26:16,790 so they have to-- 535 00:26:16,790 --> 00:26:18,830 they need to produce results quickly. 536 00:26:18,830 --> 00:26:21,110 And if they can't do that with their funding, 537 00:26:21,110 --> 00:26:23,960 then they'll lose votes, and they could even get kicked out. 538 00:26:23,960 --> 00:26:25,543 So I'm curious what your thoughts are. 539 00:26:32,868 --> 00:26:34,265 [LAUGHS] 540 00:26:34,265 --> 00:26:36,740 AUDIENCE: Do you have any interesting thoughts on that? 541 00:26:36,740 --> 00:26:38,010 WILLIAM BONVILLIAN: You know, Martin, I didn't come back 542 00:26:38,010 --> 00:26:39,430 to you when we resumed, so-- 543 00:26:39,430 --> 00:26:40,350 AUDIENCE: Oh, the point I was going to-- 544 00:26:40,350 --> 00:26:42,480 WILLIAM BONVILLIAN: I'm going to give you a chance now. 545 00:26:42,480 --> 00:26:43,620 AUDIENCE: The point I'm going to make, 546 00:26:43,620 --> 00:26:45,300 we were talking about should scientists 547 00:26:45,300 --> 00:26:48,020 be these kind of political leaders-- 548 00:26:48,020 --> 00:26:50,238 I was going to make a connection to VCs. 549 00:26:50,238 --> 00:26:51,780 VCs are the investment entrepreneurs. 550 00:26:51,780 --> 00:26:53,610 They kind of look for somebody that they say is kind 551 00:26:53,610 --> 00:26:56,210 of autistic, which is like they are in their own little world 552 00:26:56,210 --> 00:26:58,710 and they're not very-- kind of anti-social, but they focus-- 553 00:26:58,710 --> 00:27:00,180 because of that, they focus so much on the science 554 00:27:00,180 --> 00:27:01,500 that they're really, really good at it. 555 00:27:01,500 --> 00:27:03,840 And you need someone to sell it who's more social. 556 00:27:03,840 --> 00:27:06,810 So I was going to go forth from the model of somebody who's-- 557 00:27:06,810 --> 00:27:09,930 it's very rare to have something can be both. 558 00:27:09,930 --> 00:27:11,905 [INAUDIBLE] I can't really think of one. 559 00:27:11,905 --> 00:27:13,530 I also don't really think of Bill Gates 560 00:27:13,530 --> 00:27:16,458 is a super sciencey person. 561 00:27:16,458 --> 00:27:18,750 It would be more like if [INAUDIBLE] trying to become-- 562 00:27:18,750 --> 00:27:20,870 for president. 563 00:27:20,870 --> 00:27:23,730 And Loomis was this person who listened really well, 564 00:27:23,730 --> 00:27:25,750 and then could sell the ideas really well. 565 00:27:25,750 --> 00:27:28,620 So I was going to make that point, that connection where 566 00:27:28,620 --> 00:27:30,120 I couldn't really see somebody who's 567 00:27:30,120 --> 00:27:31,470 really focused on their art. 568 00:27:31,470 --> 00:27:36,530 And also to Stephanie's point, where yeah, 569 00:27:36,530 --> 00:27:38,538 that scientist might lose the ability 570 00:27:38,538 --> 00:27:40,080 to make some key discoveries, but now 571 00:27:40,080 --> 00:27:42,038 that he knows how the actual environment works, 572 00:27:42,038 --> 00:27:44,160 he can actually make any new discoveries 573 00:27:44,160 --> 00:27:46,950 with that framework in mind, which might be 574 00:27:46,950 --> 00:27:48,260 better for his career overall. 575 00:27:48,260 --> 00:27:51,068 There's this one idea from scientists, 576 00:27:51,068 --> 00:27:52,860 and also artists, where it's your best work 577 00:27:52,860 --> 00:27:54,810 comes after your 40s. 578 00:27:54,810 --> 00:27:56,400 You can have long period of doing 579 00:27:56,400 --> 00:28:01,795 something you think really, really matters, but [INAUDIBLE] 580 00:28:01,795 --> 00:28:03,420 WILLIAM BONVILLIAN: So let me translate 581 00:28:03,420 --> 00:28:07,170 your point, which is an interesting one, back to Max, 582 00:28:07,170 --> 00:28:07,950 to your question. 583 00:28:07,950 --> 00:28:12,630 So in a way, we could argue that the venture function is not 584 00:28:12,630 --> 00:28:16,980 designed into the Vannevar Bush's model. 585 00:28:16,980 --> 00:28:20,040 That's what he's trying to pull science out of, in a way. 586 00:28:20,040 --> 00:28:22,613 I'm extrapolating. 587 00:28:22,613 --> 00:28:25,280 AUDIENCE: So he's trying to find some sort of long-term solution 588 00:28:25,280 --> 00:28:27,690 for this, right, and I was trying to figure out, well, 589 00:28:27,690 --> 00:28:31,320 what is it that, given our current system-- 590 00:28:31,320 --> 00:28:33,510 as opposed to just implementing his model, 591 00:28:33,510 --> 00:28:36,670 because it didn't work the first time-- 592 00:28:36,670 --> 00:28:39,000 instead of that, is there any way 593 00:28:39,000 --> 00:28:40,950 we can adapt what we have currently 594 00:28:40,950 --> 00:28:44,280 to try to have almost a hybrid between the two, 595 00:28:44,280 --> 00:28:46,568 so it gets the funding, but there's still-- 596 00:28:46,568 --> 00:28:48,360 you can still have these separate branches? 597 00:29:00,637 --> 00:29:02,720 WILLIAM BONVILLIAN: You've stunned everybody, Max. 598 00:29:02,720 --> 00:29:03,398 AUDIENCE: Yeah. 599 00:29:03,398 --> 00:29:05,690 WILLIAM BONVILLIAN: It was too brilliant for our group. 600 00:29:05,690 --> 00:29:06,540 AUDIENCE: Or they're just thinking, 601 00:29:06,540 --> 00:29:07,480 oh it's dumb question. 602 00:29:12,203 --> 00:29:13,870 The first, most obvious thing I think of 603 00:29:13,870 --> 00:29:15,162 was just increased term limits. 604 00:29:15,162 --> 00:29:16,840 But of course, that means you have-- 605 00:29:16,840 --> 00:29:18,430 that's not great. 606 00:29:18,430 --> 00:29:20,178 That has its own disadvantages. 607 00:29:24,590 --> 00:29:27,130 AUDIENCE: I don't really see the term limits 608 00:29:27,130 --> 00:29:30,010 as much as of an effect on research, because I don't think 609 00:29:30,010 --> 00:29:32,380 everyday people are super aware of the research that's 610 00:29:32,380 --> 00:29:33,740 going on the NIH and-- 611 00:29:33,740 --> 00:29:36,255 AUDIENCE: True. 612 00:29:36,255 --> 00:29:38,380 AUDIENCE: I don't even know how much of MIT funding 613 00:29:38,380 --> 00:29:39,910 is coming from the government. 614 00:29:39,910 --> 00:29:41,003 WILLIAM BONVILLIAN: 70%. 615 00:29:41,003 --> 00:29:41,670 AUDIENCE: A lot. 616 00:29:41,670 --> 00:29:43,020 AUDIENCE: Yeah. 617 00:29:43,020 --> 00:29:47,170 AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] 618 00:29:47,170 --> 00:29:49,660 AUDIENCE: I don't know how much public accountability there 619 00:29:49,660 --> 00:29:50,160 is to that. 620 00:29:50,160 --> 00:29:50,800 I don't-- 621 00:29:50,800 --> 00:29:51,675 AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] 622 00:29:51,675 --> 00:29:54,280 AUDIENCE: --if it's as much of a problem as just the lack 623 00:29:54,280 --> 00:29:56,530 of funding in general, rather than the lack of funding 624 00:29:56,530 --> 00:29:57,640 connected to results. 625 00:29:57,640 --> 00:30:00,160 AUDIENCE: Or I think that voting-- 626 00:30:00,160 --> 00:30:04,300 votes are typically cast based on, I would say, 627 00:30:04,300 --> 00:30:10,960 more social or moral issues, rather than promises 628 00:30:10,960 --> 00:30:13,240 on science advancement. 629 00:30:13,240 --> 00:30:16,030 I can't think of a lot of people who have campaigned recently 630 00:30:16,030 --> 00:30:16,600 based on-- 631 00:30:20,230 --> 00:30:22,090 maybe I'm just not in tune, but I 632 00:30:22,090 --> 00:30:25,870 don't think there have been a lot of scientific promises 633 00:30:25,870 --> 00:30:27,790 or campaigns run on scientific promises. 634 00:30:27,790 --> 00:30:29,498 And I'm not talking about just president. 635 00:30:29,498 --> 00:30:32,090 I'm talking about two-term-- or two-year term Congress people, 636 00:30:32,090 --> 00:30:33,300 as well. 637 00:30:33,300 --> 00:30:35,317 AUDIENCE: Maybe they should be. 638 00:30:35,317 --> 00:30:37,150 WILLIAM BONVILLIAN: So I want to bring Chloe 639 00:30:37,150 --> 00:30:38,950 into this discussion, because we're rapidly 640 00:30:38,950 --> 00:30:40,340 moving into your territory. 641 00:30:40,340 --> 00:30:41,920 So why don't you pose a question? 642 00:30:41,920 --> 00:30:46,420 AUDIENCE: OK, sort of related to the topic that we were just on, 643 00:30:46,420 --> 00:30:49,120 the question that I found the most interesting to think about 644 00:30:49,120 --> 00:30:52,500 from the Blanpied reading was-- 645 00:30:52,500 --> 00:30:54,220 you mentioned it with Harry Truman 646 00:30:54,220 --> 00:30:57,130 and also, I think, Harold Smith, the director of the DOB, 647 00:30:57,130 --> 00:30:59,613 brought up similar concerns that it was essentially 648 00:30:59,613 --> 00:31:01,030 unconstitutional for the president 649 00:31:01,030 --> 00:31:04,990 to allocate funds and power to a group of private citizens, 650 00:31:04,990 --> 00:31:08,920 for them to redistribute to fund the scientific endeavors 651 00:31:08,920 --> 00:31:10,840 that they deemed worthy. 652 00:31:10,840 --> 00:31:12,780 So where do you all have opinions 653 00:31:12,780 --> 00:31:15,220 on where we should draw the line between wanting only 654 00:31:15,220 --> 00:31:17,572 our elected officials to be responsible for handling 655 00:31:17,572 --> 00:31:19,030 taxpayer dollars, and understanding 656 00:31:19,030 --> 00:31:21,670 the value of having our politicians be advised 657 00:31:21,670 --> 00:31:22,990 by experts in various fields? 658 00:31:22,990 --> 00:31:26,040 And then off of that, who ought to make sense-- 659 00:31:26,040 --> 00:31:28,240 broad question-- not to make scientific policy-- 660 00:31:28,240 --> 00:31:29,890 politicians advised by scientists, 661 00:31:29,890 --> 00:31:31,960 scientists appointed by elected politicians, 662 00:31:31,960 --> 00:31:33,760 or-- back to your point earlier-- 663 00:31:33,760 --> 00:31:36,180 politicians who are scientists? 664 00:31:36,180 --> 00:31:37,818 Is it possible? 665 00:31:37,818 --> 00:31:39,610 AUDIENCE: The first two sound very similar. 666 00:31:39,610 --> 00:31:41,020 I'm sorry, go ahead. 667 00:31:41,020 --> 00:31:45,880 AUDIENCE: I think that there are multiple levels of fund 668 00:31:45,880 --> 00:31:50,500 allocations though, so I think that there-- 669 00:31:50,500 --> 00:31:54,070 in the current system, say what the NSF, yes, politicians, 670 00:31:54,070 --> 00:32:00,370 I think, are sort of at the top, and they decide how much-- 671 00:32:00,370 --> 00:32:02,080 what the budget is-- overall budget. 672 00:32:02,080 --> 00:32:06,260 But then within the NSF, there's a scientific review process. 673 00:32:06,260 --> 00:32:10,240 So really the decision on who is funded specifically 674 00:32:10,240 --> 00:32:12,730 is farmed out to experts in the field. 675 00:32:12,730 --> 00:32:20,890 So I think that it's an OK system that we have, because-- 676 00:32:20,890 --> 00:32:22,900 maybe you're talking about the top level, 677 00:32:22,900 --> 00:32:29,580 the original decisions on allocation or budget needs. 678 00:32:29,580 --> 00:32:32,080 WILLIAM BONVILLIAN: Lily, let me build on that for a second, 679 00:32:32,080 --> 00:32:34,080 just from a practical perspective, 680 00:32:34,080 --> 00:32:35,080 on kind of how it works. 681 00:32:37,790 --> 00:32:40,610 Congress actually doesn't interfere much, frankly, 682 00:32:40,610 --> 00:32:41,900 with scientific budgets. 683 00:32:41,900 --> 00:32:43,400 It leaves NIH alone. 684 00:32:43,400 --> 00:32:45,470 It leaves NSF alone. 685 00:32:45,470 --> 00:32:47,083 It'll occasionally interfere with one 686 00:32:47,083 --> 00:32:49,250 of the defense R&D agencies, particular when they're 687 00:32:49,250 --> 00:32:52,400 spending a lot of money on actual physical project that 688 00:32:52,400 --> 00:32:55,790 may be related to science, because that affects jobs 689 00:32:55,790 --> 00:32:57,660 and employment, stuff like that. 690 00:32:57,660 --> 00:33:01,310 But the government more-- it keeps its hands off DARPA 691 00:33:01,310 --> 00:33:03,200 almost entirely. 692 00:33:03,200 --> 00:33:05,480 The Congress actually does a pretty good job 693 00:33:05,480 --> 00:33:09,710 in controlling itself from intervening. 694 00:33:09,710 --> 00:33:11,210 And there's an occasional exception, 695 00:33:11,210 --> 00:33:13,520 but they are pretty careful about maintaining 696 00:33:13,520 --> 00:33:15,350 a hands-off attitude. 697 00:33:15,350 --> 00:33:17,630 In turn, the US is organized-- again, 698 00:33:17,630 --> 00:33:20,330 at Vannevar Bush's behest-- 699 00:33:20,330 --> 00:33:21,110 it's competitive. 700 00:33:21,110 --> 00:33:23,150 It's a competitive system, with the exception 701 00:33:23,150 --> 00:33:24,525 of the Department of Agriculture, 702 00:33:24,525 --> 00:33:27,830 which has a whole lot of science entitlement funding based 703 00:33:27,830 --> 00:33:32,090 on allocations to land grant agricultural programs. 704 00:33:32,090 --> 00:33:34,520 That's the only non-competitive part. 705 00:33:34,520 --> 00:33:36,830 Scientists have got to compete for the funding. 706 00:33:36,830 --> 00:33:39,530 That was part of Vannevar Bush's original vision, 707 00:33:39,530 --> 00:33:40,400 and that remains. 708 00:33:40,400 --> 00:33:42,380 And that is a huge strength of US science. 709 00:33:42,380 --> 00:33:46,135 Other systems don't do that. 710 00:33:46,135 --> 00:33:48,260 There's much more entitlement science, for example, 711 00:33:48,260 --> 00:33:49,493 in German science. 712 00:33:49,493 --> 00:33:51,410 And they they're actually trying to reorganize 713 00:33:51,410 --> 00:33:53,210 to put a more competitive factor in, 714 00:33:53,210 --> 00:33:55,540 because they realized the value of having 715 00:33:55,540 --> 00:33:58,260 the best minds battling each other for the best research 716 00:33:58,260 --> 00:33:58,760 awards. 717 00:33:58,760 --> 00:34:01,490 And it's and it's peer-reviewed, so scientists 718 00:34:01,490 --> 00:34:03,620 are analyzing and selecting their own science. 719 00:34:03,620 --> 00:34:07,890 So overall, it's a pretty dynamic process, 720 00:34:07,890 --> 00:34:10,370 and the government isn't deciding what 721 00:34:10,370 --> 00:34:11,960 science is going to get funded. 722 00:34:11,960 --> 00:34:15,860 That was Vannevar Bush's big fear. 723 00:34:15,860 --> 00:34:18,409 The other dynamic here is that Vancouver bush came up 724 00:34:18,409 --> 00:34:21,820 with a design that fit into a conservative model. 725 00:34:21,820 --> 00:34:24,170 In other words, he's not interfering with industry. 726 00:34:24,170 --> 00:34:26,570 He's doing basic research. 727 00:34:26,570 --> 00:34:28,969 He's staying out of industry's way, by 728 00:34:28,969 --> 00:34:31,100 and large, which was another appealing 729 00:34:31,100 --> 00:34:34,940 part of the model from a political design perspective 730 00:34:34,940 --> 00:34:36,500 is that he wouldn't be, in effect, 731 00:34:36,500 --> 00:34:40,639 picking winners and losers in the industrial applied space. 732 00:34:40,639 --> 00:34:43,442 So he pulls science out of the system-- 733 00:34:43,442 --> 00:34:45,650 out of the political system, by and large, and that's 734 00:34:45,650 --> 00:34:48,530 more or less where it's been. 735 00:34:48,530 --> 00:34:51,739 Congress does make decisions about overall funding, 736 00:34:51,739 --> 00:34:54,110 but they don't really get involved, 737 00:34:54,110 --> 00:35:00,220 except to a very small extent in actual scientific allocations. 738 00:35:00,220 --> 00:35:04,800 So that's kind of how the lines got drawn in the actual system, 739 00:35:04,800 --> 00:35:05,640 as it played out. 740 00:35:05,640 --> 00:35:09,420 So in a way, Vannevar Bush got a fair amount of what he wanted. 741 00:35:09,420 --> 00:35:11,730 His concern about political interference in science 742 00:35:11,730 --> 00:35:13,080 has never really been realized. 743 00:35:13,080 --> 00:35:14,970 But then, of course, most of it's basic. 744 00:35:19,110 --> 00:35:21,990 How about one more point from each of you? 745 00:35:21,990 --> 00:35:24,660 Because I'm having to watch the clock. 746 00:35:24,660 --> 00:35:26,770 AUDIENCE: So [INAUDIBLE] actually mention 747 00:35:26,770 --> 00:35:29,370 an interesting question that I found. 748 00:35:29,370 --> 00:35:31,230 So Bush states that basic research 749 00:35:31,230 --> 00:35:33,300 is essentially non-commercial. 750 00:35:33,300 --> 00:35:36,090 It's not going to achieve the attention it requires, 751 00:35:36,090 --> 00:35:37,200 if it's left to industry. 752 00:35:37,200 --> 00:35:41,160 So how common was this belief at the time, and isn't it 753 00:35:41,160 --> 00:35:43,600 as common today? 754 00:35:43,600 --> 00:35:48,000 And has the situation improved since Bush drafted this report? 755 00:35:52,450 --> 00:35:56,920 AUDIENCE: I think maybe we can argue that basic research 756 00:35:56,920 --> 00:36:01,390 focuses on these long-term, not very commercial endeavors 757 00:36:01,390 --> 00:36:05,530 because the point is you won't see-- 758 00:36:05,530 --> 00:36:08,470 it's understood that you won't see 759 00:36:08,470 --> 00:36:11,260 immediate technological or economic benefit 760 00:36:11,260 --> 00:36:13,060 from these kind of endeavors. 761 00:36:13,060 --> 00:36:15,110 They're kind of exploratory in nature, 762 00:36:15,110 --> 00:36:18,130 and so you're going to get exploratory, only exploratory. 763 00:36:18,130 --> 00:36:20,830 And maybe, just maybe you might end up with lasers, or radar, 764 00:36:20,830 --> 00:36:22,210 or something. 765 00:36:22,210 --> 00:36:24,040 But the probability is also pretty low. 766 00:36:24,040 --> 00:36:29,020 And so I think, by nature, what we deem as basic research 767 00:36:29,020 --> 00:36:31,870 and what we hope comes out of NSF and NIH 768 00:36:31,870 --> 00:36:35,860 funding allocated to these basic research ideas isn't going 769 00:36:35,860 --> 00:36:40,810 to be picked up by commercial or private investors, 770 00:36:40,810 --> 00:36:44,950 just because of the way things are and work. 771 00:36:44,950 --> 00:36:49,840 And I think we definitely have seen that in the cutback 772 00:36:49,840 --> 00:36:51,940 in calls for basic research. 773 00:36:51,940 --> 00:36:56,110 And then we haven't really seen the funding levels aggregate 774 00:36:56,110 --> 00:37:00,610 pick up from sort of government plus private. 775 00:37:00,610 --> 00:37:05,935 Once you do the math, it doesn't equate to the same [INAUDIBLE] 776 00:37:05,935 --> 00:37:07,060 funding and basic research. 777 00:37:07,060 --> 00:37:10,180 Even if the government decides to drop off, 778 00:37:10,180 --> 00:37:14,230 we don't see private investors picking up the slack. 779 00:37:14,230 --> 00:37:16,480 You can argue that the government can play both roles, 780 00:37:16,480 --> 00:37:18,895 we can do these public private partnerships 781 00:37:18,895 --> 00:37:20,020 and also do basic research. 782 00:37:20,020 --> 00:37:21,910 But I don't think private companies can 783 00:37:21,910 --> 00:37:23,480 have that flexibility to do both, 784 00:37:23,480 --> 00:37:26,170 just because they can't operate on these really long time 785 00:37:26,170 --> 00:37:27,805 cycles without any promise of returns. 786 00:37:27,805 --> 00:37:28,930 AUDIENCE: Just a side note. 787 00:37:28,930 --> 00:37:31,910 In general, companies that can do side research 788 00:37:31,910 --> 00:37:33,300 is because they're a monopoly. 789 00:37:33,300 --> 00:37:34,800 That's the only kind of company that 790 00:37:34,800 --> 00:37:37,700 can do side research like Xerox or Bell Labs. 791 00:37:42,106 --> 00:37:43,710 AUDIENCE: Yeah, I'd say definitely 792 00:37:43,710 --> 00:37:45,880 has improved, at least in my opinion. 793 00:37:45,880 --> 00:37:50,585 It seems that research is more easily funded 794 00:37:50,585 --> 00:37:52,210 by the government, although, of course, 795 00:37:52,210 --> 00:37:55,762 there are definitely ebbs and flows in that. 796 00:37:55,762 --> 00:37:57,470 WILLIAM BONVILLIAN: So the rationale here 797 00:37:57,470 --> 00:38:00,020 is that, for early stage research, 798 00:38:00,020 --> 00:38:03,560 it's too risky for industries to manage. 799 00:38:03,560 --> 00:38:05,690 They can't necessarily assume that there's 800 00:38:05,690 --> 00:38:07,490 going to be any kind of return anywhere 801 00:38:07,490 --> 00:38:10,700 in the plausible future, so they just-- 802 00:38:10,700 --> 00:38:11,825 they're not going to do it. 803 00:38:11,825 --> 00:38:14,200 It's really out of range of what their shareholders would 804 00:38:14,200 --> 00:38:14,930 accept. 805 00:38:14,930 --> 00:38:17,240 They can do development, as we talked about 806 00:38:17,240 --> 00:38:19,730 in the first class, because that's 807 00:38:19,730 --> 00:38:22,160 much nearer-term towards results. 808 00:38:22,160 --> 00:38:25,670 But the basic research stage is much more problematic for them. 809 00:38:25,670 --> 00:38:27,670 And your point is absolutely right, 810 00:38:27,670 --> 00:38:31,310 Martin, which is that the end of the monopoly model in-- 811 00:38:31,310 --> 00:38:34,250 for example, in the communications sector, 812 00:38:34,250 --> 00:38:37,250 with the demise of AT&T, that meant 813 00:38:37,250 --> 00:38:41,920 the end of AT&T's great basic research lab system. 814 00:38:41,920 --> 00:38:45,933 AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] I took a class on open sourcing stuff. 815 00:38:45,933 --> 00:38:48,350 So I feel like if there's an ability for a private company 816 00:38:48,350 --> 00:38:48,938 to do-- 817 00:38:48,938 --> 00:38:50,480 they'll be doing interesting research 818 00:38:50,480 --> 00:38:52,730 and decide we're never going to do anything with this. 819 00:38:52,730 --> 00:38:54,410 Because this happens a lot in companies, 820 00:38:54,410 --> 00:38:56,150 where you don't want to disrupt an industry where 821 00:38:56,150 --> 00:38:58,010 it's not worth pursuing business-wise, 822 00:38:58,010 --> 00:38:59,250 because it's too complicated. 823 00:38:59,250 --> 00:39:00,750 They'll go: we've been through this. 824 00:39:00,750 --> 00:39:01,583 Do you guys want it? 825 00:39:01,583 --> 00:39:03,052 Do you want to buy it? 826 00:39:03,052 --> 00:39:04,760 I think that might be an interesting one. 827 00:39:04,760 --> 00:39:06,510 I don't know if it's been done [INAUDIBLE] 828 00:39:06,510 --> 00:39:09,820 AUDIENCE: It happens a lot in bioinformatics and computer 829 00:39:09,820 --> 00:39:10,700 science. 830 00:39:10,700 --> 00:39:12,500 Websites like GitHub, you know that that's 831 00:39:12,500 --> 00:39:15,122 the repository for everyone else's scripts 832 00:39:15,122 --> 00:39:17,330 that they've already written, and programs and stuff. 833 00:39:17,330 --> 00:39:19,520 But for a business, that would be interesting. 834 00:39:19,520 --> 00:39:20,560 WILLIAM BONVILLIAN: Chloe, how about a close out 835 00:39:20,560 --> 00:39:21,640 point from you? 836 00:39:21,640 --> 00:39:22,580 AUDIENCE: Yeah. 837 00:39:22,580 --> 00:39:25,430 AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] 838 00:39:25,430 --> 00:39:29,750 AUDIENCE: So I think it's interesting to examine why-- 839 00:39:29,750 --> 00:39:32,570 obviously, both Bush's and Steelman's proposal 840 00:39:32,570 --> 00:39:36,370 encountered different obstacles at different times, 841 00:39:36,370 --> 00:39:38,120 as we've already discussed. 842 00:39:38,120 --> 00:39:39,890 But ultimately, it took the threat 843 00:39:39,890 --> 00:39:42,670 of technological takeover by the Soviets 844 00:39:42,670 --> 00:39:45,200 with Sputnik for a lot of impetus 845 00:39:45,200 --> 00:39:48,590 to exist to fund research, to protect the educational STEM 846 00:39:48,590 --> 00:39:50,990 pipeline-- 847 00:39:50,990 --> 00:39:55,325 which, tying back to our earlier discussion of is it-- 848 00:39:55,325 --> 00:39:57,200 do we have a system structured right now such 849 00:39:57,200 --> 00:39:59,390 that the US places value on this type of research 850 00:39:59,390 --> 00:40:02,130 outside of a stressor like war? 851 00:40:02,130 --> 00:40:04,010 It seems like, at least at that point, 852 00:40:04,010 --> 00:40:07,137 it's hard to get that ball rolling. 853 00:40:07,137 --> 00:40:09,470 Which again, is ironic, because the whole discussion was 854 00:40:09,470 --> 00:40:13,490 started by Bush, who wanted to draft this outline for what 855 00:40:13,490 --> 00:40:17,450 funding that research might look like in a postwar era 856 00:40:17,450 --> 00:40:20,360 with the idea for an institution like the NSF. 857 00:40:20,360 --> 00:40:21,410 WILLIAM BONVILLIAN: Good. 858 00:40:21,410 --> 00:40:22,910 All right, I'm going to jump through 859 00:40:22,910 --> 00:40:24,800 so we can finish on time. 860 00:40:24,800 --> 00:40:26,606 The next two-- 861 00:40:26,606 --> 00:40:27,890 AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] 862 00:40:27,890 --> 00:40:28,670 WILLIAM BONVILLIAN: I'm sorry? 863 00:40:28,670 --> 00:40:30,378 AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] I think it might be 864 00:40:30,378 --> 00:40:33,320 cool as kind of a fringe idea. 865 00:40:33,320 --> 00:40:36,145 So you might have-- 866 00:40:36,145 --> 00:40:37,520 not really investigating, but you 867 00:40:37,520 --> 00:40:42,843 might have an idea for a pursuit in maybe basic research 868 00:40:42,843 --> 00:40:45,260 or something like that, but your company might decide it's 869 00:40:45,260 --> 00:40:47,810 not worth it as a business venture. 870 00:40:47,810 --> 00:40:50,660 But maybe it's a secondary system 871 00:40:50,660 --> 00:40:52,610 like selling that-- like buying and selling 872 00:40:52,610 --> 00:40:55,100 that information might be cool. 873 00:40:55,100 --> 00:40:59,870 So like I have an idea that I can't necessarily execute it 874 00:40:59,870 --> 00:41:02,465 for whatever reason, but I can make the idea known, 875 00:41:02,465 --> 00:41:04,340 and then someone else can pursue and pick up. 876 00:41:04,340 --> 00:41:05,548 AUDIENCE: Like Elon Musk did? 877 00:41:05,548 --> 00:41:08,000 AUDIENCE: Yeah, precisely. 878 00:41:08,000 --> 00:41:09,440 WILLIAM BONVILLIAN: Right. 879 00:41:09,440 --> 00:41:12,050 Some people are working on patent pools, for example, 880 00:41:12,050 --> 00:41:15,110 and amassing patent rights, which may, in turn, be 881 00:41:15,110 --> 00:41:16,610 transferable and saleable. 882 00:41:16,610 --> 00:41:21,260 So there's work going on in some of these points. 883 00:41:21,260 --> 00:41:23,000 I'm going to do the closing two readings. 884 00:41:23,000 --> 00:41:24,890 And Sanam, they're both yours, right? 885 00:41:24,890 --> 00:41:25,580 OK. 886 00:41:25,580 --> 00:41:27,920 So I'm going to quickly summarize this piece from Peter 887 00:41:27,920 --> 00:41:30,590 Singer that I put in there. 888 00:41:30,590 --> 00:41:38,590 Peter's piece is a terrific research because, frankly-- 889 00:41:38,590 --> 00:41:40,830 it's almost like doing genealogical history. 890 00:41:40,830 --> 00:41:42,870 We know what the advance is. 891 00:41:42,870 --> 00:41:45,810 Figuring out the science that emerge from 892 00:41:45,810 --> 00:41:49,590 is a really complicated process. 893 00:41:49,590 --> 00:41:54,870 But Peter, I thought, very thoughtfully dug into 894 00:41:54,870 --> 00:41:57,120 and really built a lot of the scientific history 895 00:41:57,120 --> 00:42:00,900 around a lot of advances that we live off. 896 00:42:00,900 --> 00:42:04,080 The point here is we get a lot of-- 897 00:42:04,080 --> 00:42:07,170 I don't want to denigrate Vannevar Bush's. 898 00:42:07,170 --> 00:42:09,970 Stokes takes it on, and attacks it, and criticizes it, 899 00:42:09,970 --> 00:42:11,370 I think for some good reasons. 900 00:42:11,370 --> 00:42:14,880 But we've gotten a lot out of that model. 901 00:42:14,880 --> 00:42:16,590 So federal research support has just 902 00:42:16,590 --> 00:42:19,830 been critical to the development of just an incredible array 903 00:42:19,830 --> 00:42:22,410 of advanced technologies, and basic research 904 00:42:22,410 --> 00:42:24,030 is behind a lot of that. 905 00:42:24,030 --> 00:42:25,590 So it's a key enabler. 906 00:42:25,590 --> 00:42:28,560 It's a key US comparative advantage. 907 00:42:28,560 --> 00:42:35,510 And interestingly, a big advantage of basic research 908 00:42:35,510 --> 00:42:39,610 is that it puts you out on the frontier of science, 909 00:42:39,610 --> 00:42:44,790 and you can get scientific breakthroughs 910 00:42:44,790 --> 00:42:45,930 from basic research. 911 00:42:45,930 --> 00:42:50,400 If you're just doing incremental applied work, particularly 912 00:42:50,400 --> 00:42:52,200 at the development stage, you're not 913 00:42:52,200 --> 00:42:53,730 going to get the breakthroughs. 914 00:42:53,730 --> 00:42:57,360 But if your door is open to the basic stuff, 915 00:42:57,360 --> 00:43:00,000 there's a lot of potential breakthroughs lurking in there. 916 00:43:00,000 --> 00:43:03,120 Now, getting them into implementation is not simple, 917 00:43:03,120 --> 00:43:06,840 but it is, overall, I think an advantage in the US system 918 00:43:06,840 --> 00:43:09,337 that we have strong basic research. 919 00:43:09,337 --> 00:43:10,170 What have we gotten? 920 00:43:12,720 --> 00:43:15,270 NSF supported the original funding 921 00:43:15,270 --> 00:43:18,750 for the Google search engine. 922 00:43:18,750 --> 00:43:23,550 GPS was founded on a purely scientific Navy 923 00:43:23,550 --> 00:43:24,990 effort around atomic clocks. 924 00:43:24,990 --> 00:43:28,020 That's one of the foundational technologies, as well 925 00:43:28,020 --> 00:43:32,010 as DOD's Navstar system, and work by DARPA. 926 00:43:32,010 --> 00:43:35,790 Supercomputing really came out of the DOE National Labs. 927 00:43:35,790 --> 00:43:38,460 Speech recognition came out of DARPA. 928 00:43:38,460 --> 00:43:41,400 They funded all the work behind Siri originally. 929 00:43:41,400 --> 00:43:43,470 Siri is Stanford Research Institute. 930 00:43:43,470 --> 00:43:49,430 That was the development entity, a basic research nonprofit. 931 00:43:49,430 --> 00:43:51,270 DARPA, as you know, did the ARPANET, 932 00:43:51,270 --> 00:43:53,940 which led to the internet. 933 00:43:53,940 --> 00:43:56,550 NIST did closed captioning. 934 00:43:56,550 --> 00:43:58,350 All kinds of critical technologies 935 00:43:58,350 --> 00:44:01,620 came out of basic research, as well as defense technologies 936 00:44:01,620 --> 00:44:03,060 for the smartphone. 937 00:44:03,060 --> 00:44:06,360 In energy, the whole fracking revolution 938 00:44:06,360 --> 00:44:09,310 came out of the Department of Energy's lab research. 939 00:44:09,310 --> 00:44:12,260 LEDs came from the Air Force. 940 00:44:12,260 --> 00:44:17,670 MRIs came out of NSF and NIH. 941 00:44:17,670 --> 00:44:18,547 The list goes on. 942 00:44:18,547 --> 00:44:20,880 Human Genome Project, an absolutely fundamental research 943 00:44:20,880 --> 00:44:25,470 project, was led and significantly influenced 944 00:44:25,470 --> 00:44:26,760 by NIH. 945 00:44:26,760 --> 00:44:29,400 Out of mathematics comes things like reverse auctions, 946 00:44:29,400 --> 00:44:33,330 which is a tool that we use in a number of circumstances, 947 00:44:33,330 --> 00:44:34,425 such as spectrum auctions. 948 00:44:39,300 --> 00:44:41,970 One of the great absolute breakthroughs 949 00:44:41,970 --> 00:44:45,060 of early 20th century agriculture, 950 00:44:45,060 --> 00:44:47,370 a huge enabler in that sector, is the development 951 00:44:47,370 --> 00:44:49,268 of hybrid crops, particularly hybrid corn, 952 00:44:49,268 --> 00:44:51,810 which transforms the production of corn in the United States. 953 00:44:51,810 --> 00:44:53,160 Absolutely transformative. 954 00:44:53,160 --> 00:44:55,980 Comes out of obscure agricultural research stations 955 00:44:55,980 --> 00:44:57,900 in places like Connecticut. 956 00:44:57,900 --> 00:45:02,760 So there's a lot that we've gotten out of basic research. 957 00:45:02,760 --> 00:45:06,300 You can barely see this, but it is a famous diagram 958 00:45:06,300 --> 00:45:07,530 in computer science. 959 00:45:07,530 --> 00:45:10,800 So it's called the tire tracks diagram. 960 00:45:10,800 --> 00:45:12,750 And you see these kind of lanes and then 961 00:45:12,750 --> 00:45:16,590 you see these tire tracks weaving in and out of them. 962 00:45:16,590 --> 00:45:20,730 And these are the foundational work in computer science 963 00:45:20,730 --> 00:45:24,930 and where it came from, with university work leading 964 00:45:24,930 --> 00:45:26,520 and almost initially [INAUDIBLE]---- 965 00:45:26,520 --> 00:45:29,130 that's federally-funded university research-- 966 00:45:29,130 --> 00:45:31,980 being often picked up at a subsequent stage 967 00:45:31,980 --> 00:45:36,030 by industry R&D, fed from university to industry, 968 00:45:36,030 --> 00:45:38,820 and then eventually emerging in the green lines as billion 969 00:45:38,820 --> 00:45:41,670 dollar product lines, and then eventually, 970 00:45:41,670 --> 00:45:45,810 the wider line, 10 billion or more product lines. 971 00:45:45,810 --> 00:45:48,900 So these are foundational research efforts. 972 00:45:48,900 --> 00:45:53,580 These are the technology results that emerged. 973 00:45:53,580 --> 00:45:57,240 There's a rich literature behind every single one 974 00:45:57,240 --> 00:45:59,400 of those lines-- 975 00:45:59,400 --> 00:46:02,020 small lines on this map. 976 00:46:02,020 --> 00:46:04,200 So that famous tire track diagram 977 00:46:04,200 --> 00:46:08,190 is a critical diagram developed by NSF 978 00:46:08,190 --> 00:46:11,730 in explaining how the computing revolution came about. 979 00:46:11,730 --> 00:46:13,410 We're now at Donald Stokes, and I'm just 980 00:46:13,410 --> 00:46:15,000 going to summarize very briefly. 981 00:46:15,000 --> 00:46:18,750 Stokes is a very interesting figure here. 982 00:46:18,750 --> 00:46:22,110 He was dean of the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton. 983 00:46:22,110 --> 00:46:28,470 And he dies of leukemia very tragically, and pretty early. 984 00:46:28,470 --> 00:46:30,790 This is the last big thing. 985 00:46:30,790 --> 00:46:34,065 Pasteur's quadrant is the last big project he works on. 986 00:46:37,790 --> 00:46:40,850 There's a lot of emotion in this book that he puts together. 987 00:46:40,850 --> 00:46:42,590 He feels these issues very strongly, 988 00:46:42,590 --> 00:46:44,870 as you could tell from his text. 989 00:46:44,870 --> 00:46:48,740 And what he's confronting is the relationship 990 00:46:48,740 --> 00:46:51,170 between science and government, which we've been 991 00:46:51,170 --> 00:46:55,430 trying to dissect earlier on. 992 00:46:55,430 --> 00:47:02,560 And he takes on the Vannevar Bush basic research 993 00:47:02,560 --> 00:47:07,240 model and talks about its weaknesses and failures. 994 00:47:07,240 --> 00:47:09,460 So federal support of basic research-- 995 00:47:12,120 --> 00:47:15,030 his goal was to curtail governmental control 996 00:47:15,030 --> 00:47:16,530 of the performance of that research. 997 00:47:16,530 --> 00:47:19,410 That was one of the key things Bush was up to. 998 00:47:19,410 --> 00:47:21,720 And he aimed to create, through NSF, 999 00:47:21,720 --> 00:47:24,510 an entity with cross science authority based on a way, 1000 00:47:24,510 --> 00:47:27,490 as I said earlier, on his wartime scientific organization 1001 00:47:27,490 --> 00:47:27,990 attempts. 1002 00:47:30,920 --> 00:47:34,550 The rationale behind creating NSF and supporting 1003 00:47:34,550 --> 00:47:37,490 basic research is that basic research 1004 00:47:37,490 --> 00:47:42,590 is to be performed without thought of practical ends. 1005 00:47:42,590 --> 00:47:46,440 That's one foundational feature. 1006 00:47:46,440 --> 00:47:47,390 That's what it is. 1007 00:47:47,390 --> 00:47:48,950 Let's not think about practical ends, 1008 00:47:48,950 --> 00:47:50,510 let's just do the research. 1009 00:47:50,510 --> 00:47:55,275 And then secondly, basic research will be, he argues-- 1010 00:47:55,275 --> 00:47:57,380 Vannevar Bush argues-- the pacemaker 1011 00:47:57,380 --> 00:47:59,960 of technological advance. 1012 00:47:59,960 --> 00:48:04,990 So again, he has got a pipeline model. 1013 00:48:04,990 --> 00:48:06,070 Do basic research. 1014 00:48:06,070 --> 00:48:07,292 Dump that into the pipeline. 1015 00:48:07,292 --> 00:48:08,500 Mysterious things will occur. 1016 00:48:08,500 --> 00:48:11,410 Great technologies will emerge. 1017 00:48:11,410 --> 00:48:14,260 And his assumption is that dumping that basic research 1018 00:48:14,260 --> 00:48:18,940 will pace what is going on inside that pipeline. 1019 00:48:18,940 --> 00:48:21,502 It is a left right model. 1020 00:48:21,502 --> 00:48:22,960 The government is dumping something 1021 00:48:22,960 --> 00:48:24,460 in on the left side of the pipeline. 1022 00:48:24,460 --> 00:48:28,860 Great stuff is emerging on the right side of the pipeline. 1023 00:48:28,860 --> 00:48:31,990 Now, remember Richard Nelson. 1024 00:48:31,990 --> 00:48:34,360 Nelson talked about the way in which technology 1025 00:48:34,360 --> 00:48:40,050 influences science, as well as science influencing technology. 1026 00:48:40,050 --> 00:48:44,470 Vannevar Bush does not have a two-way street 1027 00:48:44,470 --> 00:48:46,900 of interaction between the two. 1028 00:48:46,900 --> 00:48:51,040 He has organized US science on a one-way street, 1029 00:48:51,040 --> 00:48:52,260 a left to right-- 1030 00:48:52,260 --> 00:48:56,510 it's not two lanes, it's left to right. 1031 00:48:56,510 --> 00:49:00,620 So Stokes argues that that is a critical organizational 1032 00:49:00,620 --> 00:49:06,740 failure, that that radically limits 1033 00:49:06,740 --> 00:49:10,450 what you're going to be able to get out of your system. 1034 00:49:10,450 --> 00:49:13,750 Skipping ahead here, to conclude that point, 1035 00:49:13,750 --> 00:49:17,200 the Bush paradigm of the linear relation between science 1036 00:49:17,200 --> 00:49:20,830 and technology, Stokes argues, bears no resemblance 1037 00:49:20,830 --> 00:49:22,990 to their actual connection. 1038 00:49:22,990 --> 00:49:25,480 The reality is it's a two-way street, 1039 00:49:25,480 --> 00:49:27,680 and we've only organized a one-way street. 1040 00:49:27,680 --> 00:49:30,630 And therefore, this interaction is not going to occur. 1041 00:49:30,630 --> 00:49:33,070 There are deep ties between science and technology. 1042 00:49:33,070 --> 00:49:36,740 They're interactive, they're not linear. 1043 00:49:36,740 --> 00:49:47,880 So the Vannevar Bush model lasts and is respected really 1044 00:49:47,880 --> 00:49:50,090 until the 1980s. 1045 00:49:50,090 --> 00:49:51,480 And what's going on in the 1980s? 1046 00:49:51,480 --> 00:49:54,300 We talked about this in class 3. 1047 00:49:54,300 --> 00:49:57,000 That's the great competition with Japan. 1048 00:49:57,000 --> 00:49:59,550 And Japan builds a much more connected system, 1049 00:49:59,550 --> 00:50:01,320 much deeper ties between industry 1050 00:50:01,320 --> 00:50:03,060 and its research system-- 1051 00:50:03,060 --> 00:50:07,050 in fact, its research system is industry-led really. 1052 00:50:07,050 --> 00:50:09,450 The US has got this disaggregated system. 1053 00:50:09,450 --> 00:50:11,370 Basic research is off on the side. 1054 00:50:11,370 --> 00:50:14,520 The argument is the US is coming up with the breakthroughs. 1055 00:50:14,520 --> 00:50:16,470 It's not able to implement them. 1056 00:50:16,470 --> 00:50:18,360 It is not turning them into industries. 1057 00:50:18,360 --> 00:50:20,550 In fact, Japan is taking the US breakthroughs 1058 00:50:20,550 --> 00:50:22,380 and turning them into industries. 1059 00:50:22,380 --> 00:50:25,170 That's the story of a lot of consumer electronics 1060 00:50:25,170 --> 00:50:27,090 in that period of time. 1061 00:50:27,090 --> 00:50:31,082 And Stokes is suggesting we've got to get down to basics here. 1062 00:50:31,082 --> 00:50:33,040 We've got a fundamental organizational problem. 1063 00:50:33,040 --> 00:50:35,080 It's not an accident that this occurred, 1064 00:50:35,080 --> 00:50:37,510 it's the way we organize things. 1065 00:50:37,510 --> 00:50:39,080 That's why it happened. 1066 00:50:39,080 --> 00:50:42,190 And this is a very anxious moment in US political history 1067 00:50:42,190 --> 00:50:44,140 when he's writing here, because we're 1068 00:50:44,140 --> 00:50:47,440 starting to de-industrialize, and with lots 1069 00:50:47,440 --> 00:50:54,010 of effects on a lot of people in the United States. 1070 00:50:54,010 --> 00:50:58,810 So Stokes argues that Vannevar Bush's model is static, 1071 00:50:58,810 --> 00:51:01,510 whereas, in fact, the reality is dynamic, 1072 00:51:01,510 --> 00:51:04,750 and the static linear model is not the right model. 1073 00:51:04,750 --> 00:51:09,070 So he short circuited the thinking process. 1074 00:51:09,070 --> 00:51:12,250 He assumed, because you do basic research, 1075 00:51:12,250 --> 00:51:14,000 implementation would follow. 1076 00:51:14,000 --> 00:51:18,220 But it doesn't necessarily follow, Stokes argues. 1077 00:51:18,220 --> 00:51:19,660 It's one-dimensional. 1078 00:51:23,270 --> 00:51:26,580 Stokes's quadrant picture is an important picture 1079 00:51:26,580 --> 00:51:29,990 to understand, because this is the classic critique of many 1080 00:51:29,990 --> 00:51:32,450 of Vannevar Bush model, which is the classic critique of US 1081 00:51:32,450 --> 00:51:34,910 science organization. 1082 00:51:34,910 --> 00:51:36,590 So all this stuff we're reading here 1083 00:51:36,590 --> 00:51:40,880 is pretty noted material in US science history. 1084 00:51:40,880 --> 00:51:43,175 Here is his Pasteur's quadrant, which you all saw. 1085 00:51:45,800 --> 00:51:49,670 So there's four quadrants, Stokes's mind, 1086 00:51:49,670 --> 00:51:51,140 and there's two axes-- 1087 00:51:51,140 --> 00:51:53,570 are you searching for a fundamental understanding, yes 1088 00:51:53,570 --> 00:51:56,517 or no, and are you considering use, 1089 00:51:56,517 --> 00:51:58,100 considering the utility of what you're 1090 00:51:58,100 --> 00:52:01,160 researching-- no and yes. 1091 00:52:01,160 --> 00:52:05,000 So he has this nice quadrant, and then 1092 00:52:05,000 --> 00:52:06,653 to the upper-left quadrant, where 1093 00:52:06,653 --> 00:52:08,570 you're searching for fundamental understanding 1094 00:52:08,570 --> 00:52:10,700 but you're not considering use, that's 1095 00:52:10,700 --> 00:52:13,670 like physics in the '20s. 1096 00:52:13,670 --> 00:52:15,110 That's like Niels Bohr. 1097 00:52:15,110 --> 00:52:17,030 They're figuring out particle physics. 1098 00:52:17,030 --> 00:52:20,710 They don't see any utility for this. 1099 00:52:20,710 --> 00:52:23,020 The idea comes along later about atomic weapons, 1100 00:52:23,020 --> 00:52:25,240 but that's decades away. 1101 00:52:25,240 --> 00:52:28,318 So yes, we can understand that is an interesting moment, 1102 00:52:28,318 --> 00:52:29,860 search for fundamental understanding, 1103 00:52:29,860 --> 00:52:32,235 no consideration, really just trying to understand stuff. 1104 00:52:34,700 --> 00:52:36,880 Then there's what he calls Pasteur's quadrant, 1105 00:52:36,880 --> 00:52:40,550 and he argues this is the one that Vannevar Bush's 1106 00:52:40,550 --> 00:52:43,550 model misses completely. 1107 00:52:43,550 --> 00:52:46,550 He's trying to organize as though its particle physics, 1108 00:52:46,550 --> 00:52:48,980 but a lot of stuff isn't. 1109 00:52:48,980 --> 00:52:53,270 So Louis Pasteur, he's searching for fundamental understanding. 1110 00:52:53,270 --> 00:52:57,770 He's doing microbiology at a really fundamental scale, 1111 00:52:57,770 --> 00:52:59,600 but he's certainly considering use. 1112 00:52:59,600 --> 00:53:03,230 He doesn't want kids to die of bad milk in Paris. 1113 00:53:03,230 --> 00:53:04,820 He's considering use. 1114 00:53:04,820 --> 00:53:06,470 He's up to something here. 1115 00:53:06,470 --> 00:53:08,720 He's after a medical fix. 1116 00:53:08,720 --> 00:53:11,660 So that's a very good example of basic research being 1117 00:53:11,660 --> 00:53:14,720 driven by consideration of use. 1118 00:53:14,720 --> 00:53:17,710 And Stokes doesn't want to eliminate this quadrant-- 1119 00:53:17,710 --> 00:53:19,160 he knows how productive it is-- 1120 00:53:19,160 --> 00:53:22,070 but he sure wants to add consideration of this quadrant. 1121 00:53:22,070 --> 00:53:25,640 Now, what are the other two quadrants? 1122 00:53:25,640 --> 00:53:28,250 No search for fundamental understanding, 1123 00:53:28,250 --> 00:53:29,420 and consideration of use. 1124 00:53:29,420 --> 00:53:32,120 So in here he puts Thomas Edison. 1125 00:53:32,120 --> 00:53:33,990 That's like the light bulb. 1126 00:53:33,990 --> 00:53:35,990 Thomas Edison doesn't really care about physics. 1127 00:53:35,990 --> 00:53:38,840 He just cares about the light bulb. 1128 00:53:38,840 --> 00:53:41,280 But it turns out to be a little more complicated, 1129 00:53:41,280 --> 00:53:43,610 and we'll talk about this in class 7. 1130 00:53:43,610 --> 00:53:48,410 But Edison has got scientists in that room, 1131 00:53:48,410 --> 00:53:50,990 in that idea factory, as he calls it, 1132 00:53:50,990 --> 00:53:56,780 in Menlo Park, New Jersey, that frame 100-foot-long building. 1133 00:53:56,780 --> 00:53:59,270 And they are onto some scientific ideas here. 1134 00:53:59,270 --> 00:54:01,520 And there is something called the Edison effect, which 1135 00:54:01,520 --> 00:54:03,410 actually helps explain electron theory, 1136 00:54:03,410 --> 00:54:06,830 that Edison himself and some of the other crew come up with. 1137 00:54:06,830 --> 00:54:12,260 So there is science evolving out of the technology 1138 00:54:12,260 --> 00:54:14,750 that they're pursuing. 1139 00:54:14,750 --> 00:54:18,350 So it's consideration of use, but they 1140 00:54:18,350 --> 00:54:21,560 are finding some fundamental understandings here, 1141 00:54:21,560 --> 00:54:23,067 because it is a two-way street. 1142 00:54:23,067 --> 00:54:24,650 Now, the one that makes no sense to me 1143 00:54:24,650 --> 00:54:28,130 is, is there anybody really is not 1144 00:54:28,130 --> 00:54:30,710 searching for fundamental understanding 1145 00:54:30,710 --> 00:54:32,960 and not considering use? 1146 00:54:32,960 --> 00:54:34,400 Who would do that? 1147 00:54:34,400 --> 00:54:35,150 Who would do that? 1148 00:54:35,150 --> 00:54:39,550 So Stokes says, oh, Darwin. 1149 00:54:39,550 --> 00:54:42,895 Gets on a boat, has a nice ocean voyage-- 1150 00:54:42,895 --> 00:54:44,270 AUDIENCE: Sounds like fun though. 1151 00:54:44,270 --> 00:54:46,312 WILLIAM BONVILLIAN: --walks around the Galapagos, 1152 00:54:46,312 --> 00:54:48,732 evolution dawns. 1153 00:54:48,732 --> 00:54:49,940 It's not the way it happened. 1154 00:54:49,940 --> 00:54:52,490 He gets on the Beagle because he already 1155 00:54:52,490 --> 00:54:57,320 has developed a lot of evolution theory. 1156 00:54:57,320 --> 00:54:58,840 In fact, his father is a scientist 1157 00:54:58,840 --> 00:55:00,440 who's been working on it before him, 1158 00:55:00,440 --> 00:55:06,420 so he has a very good idea of why he's getting on that ship. 1159 00:55:06,420 --> 00:55:09,390 So I don't really know anybody who quite fits there, because I 1160 00:55:09,390 --> 00:55:10,770 don't really think Darwin does. 1161 00:55:10,770 --> 00:55:12,360 Darwin really as a pretty good idea 1162 00:55:12,360 --> 00:55:13,830 what scientific theories he's going 1163 00:55:13,830 --> 00:55:17,640 to be pursuing, as he sails around the world. 1164 00:55:17,640 --> 00:55:21,030 So I'm open to suggestions, if anybody can think of someone. 1165 00:55:21,030 --> 00:55:24,630 But I think he feels this blank in because it's a quadrant. 1166 00:55:24,630 --> 00:55:27,210 He has to put something in there. 1167 00:55:27,210 --> 00:55:29,220 How does he think it really works? 1168 00:55:29,220 --> 00:55:33,900 He comes up with this complex diagram, which is very-- 1169 00:55:33,900 --> 00:55:36,210 it's a little hard to follow. 1170 00:55:36,210 --> 00:55:39,900 He calls it Stokes's dynamic model. 1171 00:55:39,900 --> 00:55:43,050 And you can see that use-inspired research 1172 00:55:43,050 --> 00:55:44,070 is the big one. 1173 00:55:44,070 --> 00:55:45,510 Then there's pure basic research, 1174 00:55:45,510 --> 00:55:47,580 and then there's purely-applied research. 1175 00:55:47,580 --> 00:55:49,260 And then there's this kind of system 1176 00:55:49,260 --> 00:55:51,190 between early understanding, improved understanding, 1177 00:55:51,190 --> 00:55:53,232 and improved technology, and existing technology. 1178 00:55:53,232 --> 00:55:55,440 And everything swirling around, but this 1179 00:55:55,440 --> 00:55:56,640 is right at the center. 1180 00:55:56,640 --> 00:55:59,310 That's kind of his idea of how it really works. 1181 00:55:59,310 --> 00:56:00,805 And his critique of Vannevar Bush 1182 00:56:00,805 --> 00:56:03,930 is you're putting all your bets here, 1183 00:56:03,930 --> 00:56:08,160 and you have to think about this, as well. 1184 00:56:08,160 --> 00:56:09,580 So that's Stokes's critique. 1185 00:56:12,400 --> 00:56:16,210 And the fact that the US was doing great science 1186 00:56:16,210 --> 00:56:20,330 and not making it is what drives him 1187 00:56:20,330 --> 00:56:23,330 to this set of realizations about these fundamentals of how 1188 00:56:23,330 --> 00:56:27,470 we've organized our science and technology system in the US. 1189 00:56:27,470 --> 00:56:30,110 So Sanam, it's all yours. 1190 00:56:30,110 --> 00:56:34,820 AUDIENCE: OK, well, I guess I'll just start with some thoughts 1191 00:56:34,820 --> 00:56:38,210 that I had on basic research in general from both these two 1192 00:56:38,210 --> 00:56:39,680 readings. 1193 00:56:39,680 --> 00:56:44,780 So it seems, we've been reading, a major downfall or obstacle 1194 00:56:44,780 --> 00:56:46,550 to basic research is that the payoffs are 1195 00:56:46,550 --> 00:56:49,417 risky and uncertain, especially in the short run. 1196 00:56:49,417 --> 00:56:51,500 And that's kind of what shareholders are generally 1197 00:56:51,500 --> 00:56:55,130 most concerned about is short on profits. 1198 00:56:55,130 --> 00:56:58,070 And so that kind of hinders the long-term investments 1199 00:56:58,070 --> 00:56:59,960 in basic research, which potentially 1200 00:56:59,960 --> 00:57:03,350 have really large positive externalities, as we've 1201 00:57:03,350 --> 00:57:04,940 been seeing. 1202 00:57:04,940 --> 00:57:05,930 And there's also-- 1203 00:57:05,930 --> 00:57:07,570 I think Stokes mentioned this-- 1204 00:57:07,570 --> 00:57:11,780 there's also a low incentive because the original investor 1205 00:57:11,780 --> 00:57:14,330 often doesn't reap the most benefits 1206 00:57:14,330 --> 00:57:17,720 from whatever eventually comes of the basic research. 1207 00:57:17,720 --> 00:57:20,330 And the profits are spread throughout society, 1208 00:57:20,330 --> 00:57:22,250 and not always concentrated [INAUDIBLE].. 1209 00:57:22,250 --> 00:57:28,340 So investing in and instigating basic research is-- 1210 00:57:28,340 --> 00:57:31,580 there's a lower incentive for that. 1211 00:57:31,580 --> 00:57:33,980 And I think that's an argument to classify it 1212 00:57:33,980 --> 00:57:36,125 as a public good, which is really 1213 00:57:36,125 --> 00:57:38,000 in favor of saying the government should be-- 1214 00:57:38,000 --> 00:57:39,417 or federal support should be there 1215 00:57:39,417 --> 00:57:43,250 for providing this public good quote, unquote 1216 00:57:43,250 --> 00:57:44,330 "of basic research." 1217 00:57:44,330 --> 00:57:47,210 And I think that's a very good argument for the necessity 1218 00:57:47,210 --> 00:57:48,758 of federal support. 1219 00:57:48,758 --> 00:57:50,300 But the other thing I was thinking of 1220 00:57:50,300 --> 00:57:56,920 is that are there ways of expanding this from just-- 1221 00:57:56,920 --> 00:57:58,520 the responsibility, shifting it just 1222 00:57:58,520 --> 00:58:03,140 from that of the federal government to other actors? 1223 00:58:03,140 --> 00:58:05,870 So some thoughts that I had when I was doing these readings 1224 00:58:05,870 --> 00:58:06,715 were-- 1225 00:58:06,715 --> 00:58:08,090 and I'll put this question to you 1226 00:58:08,090 --> 00:58:11,750 guys-- is there a way to change the payoff structure 1227 00:58:11,750 --> 00:58:14,870 so that the responsibility to provide funding 1228 00:58:14,870 --> 00:58:19,940 for basic research can be on industries, as well? 1229 00:58:19,940 --> 00:58:23,120 Or is there a way to have an integrated system that 1230 00:58:23,120 --> 00:58:26,540 encourages multiple and synergistic benefits 1231 00:58:26,540 --> 00:58:29,230 that both firms, private actors, and maybe 1232 00:58:29,230 --> 00:58:32,990 even some public actors all want to kind of buy into? 1233 00:58:32,990 --> 00:58:36,740 And I think that gets us closer to-- 1234 00:58:36,740 --> 00:58:41,150 Singer mentions the rich ecosystem following post-- 1235 00:58:41,150 --> 00:58:43,790 after the war, where it wasn't a situation 1236 00:58:43,790 --> 00:58:47,300 of a lone innovator working by themselves or anything. 1237 00:58:50,030 --> 00:58:53,978 So that's one of the main things I've been trying 1238 00:58:53,978 --> 00:58:55,270 to process with these readings. 1239 00:58:55,270 --> 00:58:57,410 So I guess the more general question to you 1240 00:58:57,410 --> 00:59:00,860 all would be with-- 1241 00:59:03,680 --> 00:59:07,940 how to change the system so that private and public funding 1242 00:59:07,940 --> 00:59:11,060 relationships can work together, and also 1243 00:59:11,060 --> 00:59:14,120 can be cognizant of the different agendas and goals 1244 00:59:14,120 --> 00:59:18,500 of the different actors within the institutionalized science 1245 00:59:18,500 --> 00:59:20,776 framework that we've been looking at. 1246 00:59:20,776 --> 00:59:21,722 Any thoughts? 1247 00:59:25,980 --> 00:59:29,400 AUDIENCE: I wonder who it connects to the energy 1248 00:59:29,400 --> 00:59:32,270 industry [INAUDIBLE] 1249 00:59:32,270 --> 00:59:35,040 AUDIENCE: I feel like I'm repeating myself, 1250 00:59:35,040 --> 00:59:38,782 but when I was first here, we talked about patient capital 1251 00:59:38,782 --> 00:59:39,990 and this breakthrough energy. 1252 00:59:39,990 --> 00:59:45,090 And [INAUDIBLE] one of the proposals there was definitely 1253 00:59:45,090 --> 00:59:46,170 a public partner-- 1254 00:59:46,170 --> 00:59:50,350 a public private partnership with different countries, 1255 00:59:50,350 --> 00:59:51,210 including the US. 1256 00:59:51,210 --> 00:59:52,752 And unfortunately, it's not happening 1257 00:59:52,752 --> 00:59:55,500 in the US of committing to double their R&D 1258 00:59:55,500 --> 00:59:56,670 budgets around energy. 1259 00:59:56,670 --> 00:59:58,830 And then, again, this is just Bill Gates 1260 00:59:58,830 --> 01:00:00,060 and his billionaires club. 1261 01:00:00,060 --> 01:00:02,580 But it could be other sources of private capital, 1262 01:00:02,580 --> 01:00:05,940 and we're starting to see some other sources pledging 1263 01:00:05,940 --> 01:00:08,790 to pick up what that-- 1264 01:00:08,790 --> 01:00:11,160 what they were calling mission innovation that 1265 01:00:11,160 --> 01:00:15,480 bringing basic research ideas further along, 1266 01:00:15,480 --> 01:00:17,440 pick those up, and incubate them longer. 1267 01:00:23,880 --> 01:00:25,290 The MIT Energy Initiative doesn't 1268 01:00:25,290 --> 01:00:28,920 solve all the world's problems, but there's definitely 1269 01:00:28,920 --> 01:00:30,570 early stage research that we fund-- 1270 01:00:30,570 --> 01:00:34,430 that part of every company's membership they put 1271 01:00:34,430 --> 01:00:39,210 $100,000 a year into a pool, and we fund what we call commonly 1272 01:00:39,210 --> 01:00:42,720 around MIT different people are doing seed grants. 1273 01:00:42,720 --> 01:00:45,803 So I could go on about that, but we have-- 1274 01:00:45,803 --> 01:00:48,220 AUDIENCE: Do you mean like in Media Lab, because the Media 1275 01:00:48,220 --> 01:00:50,190 Lab models-- 1276 01:00:50,190 --> 01:00:55,667 I forget how much they get paid for each company [INAUDIBLE] 1277 01:00:55,667 --> 01:00:57,250 AUDIENCE: We have something like that, 1278 01:00:57,250 --> 01:00:59,822 but nobody gets IP at the Media Lab. 1279 01:00:59,822 --> 01:01:01,530 Nobody gets IP for what I just described, 1280 01:01:01,530 --> 01:01:04,202 for the early stage stuff. 1281 01:01:04,202 --> 01:01:05,910 Because we also bring in like $30 million 1282 01:01:05,910 --> 01:01:09,690 a year of money for sponsored research. 1283 01:01:09,690 --> 01:01:13,220 But Bill, I don't know if you want to say anything 1284 01:01:13,220 --> 01:01:17,880 that ARPA-E. That's also a part of the Department of Energy 1285 01:01:17,880 --> 01:01:21,330 that's modeled after DARPA, that definitely funds early stage. 1286 01:01:21,330 --> 01:01:25,980 And a bunch of MIT faculty have gotten those grants. 1287 01:01:25,980 --> 01:01:28,230 I don't know how much it's under threat at the moment. 1288 01:01:28,230 --> 01:01:29,438 I guess a piece of ARPA-E is. 1289 01:01:29,438 --> 01:01:31,772 WILLIAM BONVILLIAN: ARPA-E is proposed to be eliminated. 1290 01:01:31,772 --> 01:01:33,260 AUDIENCE: The total piece. 1291 01:01:33,260 --> 01:01:33,810 WILLIAM BONVILLIAN: Yes. 1292 01:01:33,810 --> 01:01:34,760 AUDIENCE: It's not even a lot of money, right? 1293 01:01:34,760 --> 01:01:35,700 It's like $103 million? 1294 01:01:35,700 --> 01:01:37,283 WILLIAM BONVILLIAN: It's $300 million. 1295 01:01:37,283 --> 01:01:39,577 AUDIENCE: 300, OK. 1296 01:01:39,577 --> 01:01:41,660 WILLIAM BONVILLIAN: Only at the federal government 1297 01:01:41,660 --> 01:01:43,035 would that not be a lot of money. 1298 01:01:45,840 --> 01:01:49,178 AUDIENCE: Does any of that address what you were-- 1299 01:01:49,178 --> 01:01:50,720 WILLIAM BONVILLIAN: But Sanam, you're 1300 01:01:50,720 --> 01:01:52,262 driving it really interesting points. 1301 01:01:52,262 --> 01:01:54,212 What are some other organizational models 1302 01:01:54,212 --> 01:01:56,420 that might help us get around some of these dilemmas? 1303 01:01:56,420 --> 01:01:59,618 And it's a really intriguing set of questions. 1304 01:02:03,008 --> 01:02:04,550 AUDIENCE: Going back to some of the-- 1305 01:02:04,550 --> 01:02:06,717 not even organizational stuff, but some of the stuff 1306 01:02:06,717 --> 01:02:09,020 that we talked about earlier like new accounting 1307 01:02:09,020 --> 01:02:12,235 methods, or increased tax benefits 1308 01:02:12,235 --> 01:02:16,630 for doing basic science research and things like that. 1309 01:02:16,630 --> 01:02:20,310 If you don't mind, I had a question about this reading. 1310 01:02:20,310 --> 01:02:27,520 So he kind of pokes holes in Bush's linear relationship 1311 01:02:27,520 --> 01:02:30,760 between basic R&D and development-- or basic research 1312 01:02:30,760 --> 01:02:32,770 and development. 1313 01:02:32,770 --> 01:02:36,490 So he creates this quadrant, and I didn't really 1314 01:02:36,490 --> 01:02:40,660 gather from it so much what he was recommending from a policy 1315 01:02:40,660 --> 01:02:43,880 perspective how you de-distribute 1316 01:02:43,880 --> 01:02:49,030 funding across those three or four sections differently. 1317 01:02:49,030 --> 01:02:55,810 I didn't see that much in the reading [INAUDIBLE] 1318 01:02:55,810 --> 01:02:58,600 WILLIAM BONVILLIAN: Right. 1319 01:02:58,600 --> 01:03:00,520 In a way, Matthew, you're asking, 1320 01:03:00,520 --> 01:03:05,530 is Stokes attacking what's really kind of a paper tiger? 1321 01:03:05,530 --> 01:03:09,148 Does this system that Stokes is describing 1322 01:03:09,148 --> 01:03:10,690 of the federal government really only 1323 01:03:10,690 --> 01:03:15,630 funding pure basic research along the Vannevar Bush lines-- 1324 01:03:15,630 --> 01:03:17,440 does that really exist? 1325 01:03:17,440 --> 01:03:19,610 And I think there actually is a serious question. 1326 01:03:19,610 --> 01:03:22,360 So in the next class, class 6, we're 1327 01:03:22,360 --> 01:03:24,160 going to dive pretty deeply into that 1328 01:03:24,160 --> 01:03:26,680 question-- how does the system actually work? 1329 01:03:31,477 --> 01:03:33,310 I've just described the Vannevar Bush model, 1330 01:03:33,310 --> 01:03:35,800 which dominates US civilian science 1331 01:03:35,800 --> 01:03:38,235 and the major scientific organizations that 1332 01:03:38,235 --> 01:03:38,860 are part of it. 1333 01:03:38,860 --> 01:03:41,920 So NIH, NSF, DOE, Office of Science 1334 01:03:41,920 --> 01:03:46,030 are all organized on a basic research model. 1335 01:03:46,030 --> 01:03:52,070 But then there's a parallel universe in the US R&D system. 1336 01:03:52,070 --> 01:03:56,450 The Defense Innovation system is not organized like that at all. 1337 01:03:56,450 --> 01:03:58,550 It's back to World War II. 1338 01:03:58,550 --> 01:04:00,410 It's a much more connected system. 1339 01:04:00,410 --> 01:04:02,390 So we're going to explore that in class 6 1340 01:04:02,390 --> 01:04:03,960 in a fair amount of depth. 1341 01:04:03,960 --> 01:04:08,720 But the agencies themselves have changed. 1342 01:04:08,720 --> 01:04:10,260 They've evolved over time. 1343 01:04:10,260 --> 01:04:18,400 So for example, at NSF itself, which 1344 01:04:18,400 --> 01:04:22,090 is the classic basic research organization-- 1345 01:04:22,090 --> 01:04:24,660 NSF's probably greatest director, Eric Bloch, 1346 01:04:24,660 --> 01:04:27,280 who died tragically recently-- 1347 01:04:27,280 --> 01:04:28,840 great, great figure in science. 1348 01:04:28,840 --> 01:04:34,580 He's the only NSF director to come out of industry, 1349 01:04:34,580 --> 01:04:40,160 so he was part of that amazing IBM team that did a lot of-- 1350 01:04:40,160 --> 01:04:42,260 that won the president's Medal of Technology 1351 01:04:42,260 --> 01:04:46,940 for some of their really early computing advances. 1352 01:04:46,940 --> 01:04:49,020 So he comes out of the computer science arena. 1353 01:04:49,020 --> 01:04:50,900 And so he walks into NSF. 1354 01:04:50,900 --> 01:04:54,110 He sees this basic research agency. 1355 01:04:54,110 --> 01:04:56,780 He sees that they all seem to want computers, 1356 01:04:56,780 --> 01:05:00,350 but they have no idea of what computer science is. 1357 01:05:00,350 --> 01:05:05,300 So he creates a whole new branch of science, computer science, 1358 01:05:05,300 --> 01:05:08,360 and builds a strong support system for computer science 1359 01:05:08,360 --> 01:05:10,143 organizations and departments. 1360 01:05:10,143 --> 01:05:11,810 DARPA had previously been funding those. 1361 01:05:11,810 --> 01:05:15,120 Suddenly, NSF is landing in that space, as well. 1362 01:05:15,120 --> 01:05:18,530 In addition, he embraces the engineering division. 1363 01:05:18,530 --> 01:05:21,110 He himself is an engineer from RPI. 1364 01:05:21,110 --> 01:05:23,030 He embraces the engineering division 1365 01:05:23,030 --> 01:05:26,090 and brings in a whole set of much more connected 1366 01:05:26,090 --> 01:05:28,982 collaborative engineering research centers 1367 01:05:28,982 --> 01:05:30,440 and related programs that are going 1368 01:05:30,440 --> 01:05:34,400 to be much more connected into the system than most of NSF is. 1369 01:05:34,400 --> 01:05:37,640 So even these agencies themselves 1370 01:05:37,640 --> 01:05:41,570 tend to push further down the innovation pipeline 1371 01:05:41,570 --> 01:05:44,090 than just the early stage research, even 1372 01:05:44,090 --> 01:05:46,130 an organization like NSF. 1373 01:05:46,130 --> 01:05:51,050 So there's an evolving story here on how US science 1374 01:05:51,050 --> 01:05:53,100 organizations is structured. 1375 01:05:53,100 --> 01:05:55,670 And when you read an article in the next class 1376 01:05:55,670 --> 01:05:57,680 about new model innovation agencies, 1377 01:05:57,680 --> 01:06:00,045 we're going to confront some of those issues. 1378 01:06:00,045 --> 01:06:01,420 So in the next class, we're going 1379 01:06:01,420 --> 01:06:04,610 to talk about the parallel Defense Innovation 1380 01:06:04,610 --> 01:06:07,460 organization, which is very connected, 1381 01:06:07,460 --> 01:06:09,980 as well as the evolution of these agencies themselves. 1382 01:06:09,980 --> 01:06:13,340 So it's not as if things have stood still. 1383 01:06:13,340 --> 01:06:18,170 Stokes's critique has been understood and accepted, 1384 01:06:18,170 --> 01:06:20,780 in some ways, in some parts of these other agencies, 1385 01:06:20,780 --> 01:06:26,080 although they still remain basic research-based. 1386 01:06:26,080 --> 01:06:27,910 So it's an evolving story here, Matthew. 1387 01:06:31,070 --> 01:06:34,780 Sanam, how about one more question-- or a couple more? 1388 01:06:34,780 --> 01:06:39,430 AUDIENCE: Yeah, so getting at the idea of short-term 1389 01:06:39,430 --> 01:06:41,080 versus longer-term, if we're looking 1390 01:06:41,080 --> 01:06:44,560 at that top-right quadrant where it's 1391 01:06:44,560 --> 01:06:48,190 use-considered basic research, do 1392 01:06:48,190 --> 01:06:51,820 you think that that's still a little-- there's 1393 01:06:51,820 --> 01:06:54,400 a lot of emphasis on innovation being centered there. 1394 01:06:54,400 --> 01:06:57,130 Do you think that's still focused on 1395 01:06:57,130 --> 01:07:02,920 short to medium-term visions, and excluding the longer-term, 1396 01:07:02,920 --> 01:07:05,268 or do you think there's also the space for more 1397 01:07:05,268 --> 01:07:06,732 long-term approach? 1398 01:07:14,070 --> 01:07:20,180 AUDIENCE: So I think just one example [INAUDIBLE] like DARPA. 1399 01:07:20,180 --> 01:07:25,130 Because I worked on a project with exoskeletons. 1400 01:07:25,130 --> 01:07:27,730 It was funded by DARPA, and they-- 1401 01:07:27,730 --> 01:07:30,070 it was consideration-based. 1402 01:07:30,070 --> 01:07:35,440 They were looking for the next generation of soldiers. 1403 01:07:35,440 --> 01:07:39,250 And the projects that they were funding 1404 01:07:39,250 --> 01:07:43,120 were super early stage, down to [INAUDIBLE] basics 1405 01:07:43,120 --> 01:07:46,615 of biomechanics, and energy usage, and metabolics, 1406 01:07:46,615 --> 01:07:49,940 biowalking, [INAUDIBLE]. 1407 01:07:49,940 --> 01:07:55,992 So I do think there are some examples of a longer-term while 1408 01:07:55,992 --> 01:07:58,123 still considering use. 1409 01:07:58,123 --> 01:08:00,040 AUDIENCE: Yeah, I think it's harder and harder 1410 01:08:00,040 --> 01:08:03,580 to think of examples of pure basic research now. 1411 01:08:03,580 --> 01:08:05,830 Obviously, there are still some. 1412 01:08:05,830 --> 01:08:07,930 Like astrophysics research and understanding 1413 01:08:07,930 --> 01:08:10,150 the universe might still fall into that category. 1414 01:08:10,150 --> 01:08:14,110 But I think a lot of what people are doing, 1415 01:08:14,110 --> 01:08:15,880 people have some sort of idea of what 1416 01:08:15,880 --> 01:08:17,020 an end goal might be in it. 1417 01:08:17,020 --> 01:08:20,740 Like biotech applications can go back 1418 01:08:20,740 --> 01:08:22,353 to very basic bio research. 1419 01:08:22,353 --> 01:08:23,770 And now people doing that research 1420 01:08:23,770 --> 01:08:26,350 are thinking about how it might be 1421 01:08:26,350 --> 01:08:28,210 able to be used in the future. 1422 01:08:28,210 --> 01:08:31,690 So I think that is definitely still long-term. 1423 01:08:31,690 --> 01:08:33,700 WILLIAM BONVILLIAN: Steph, I like your point. 1424 01:08:33,700 --> 01:08:36,760 And an MIT scientist once explained to me 1425 01:08:36,760 --> 01:08:38,560 how it actually works. 1426 01:08:38,560 --> 01:08:41,979 He said, look, on day one, I'm doing 1427 01:08:41,979 --> 01:08:43,600 fundamental exploratory science. 1428 01:08:43,600 --> 01:08:46,600 And I may do that for a considerable period of time. 1429 01:08:46,600 --> 01:08:48,550 Then I see something. 1430 01:08:48,550 --> 01:08:50,080 Then I see something. 1431 01:08:50,080 --> 01:08:52,479 Some kind of opportunity pattern. 1432 01:08:52,479 --> 01:08:56,050 Suddenly, I'm doing applied science, because something-- 1433 01:08:56,050 --> 01:08:56,920 I've seen something. 1434 01:08:56,920 --> 01:08:58,720 I've seen what the possibilities are. 1435 01:08:58,720 --> 01:09:02,439 And then I'll play with that, and then it doesn't work, 1436 01:09:02,439 --> 01:09:05,859 so then I'm back doing fundamental exploratory basic 1437 01:09:05,859 --> 01:09:09,340 science again for a while. 1438 01:09:09,340 --> 01:09:11,020 It's a dynamic process here. 1439 01:09:11,020 --> 01:09:12,670 I think Stokes is right. 1440 01:09:12,670 --> 01:09:15,160 It's not a static linear process. 1441 01:09:15,160 --> 01:09:16,990 And often, the scientists themselves 1442 01:09:16,990 --> 01:09:20,992 will move between basic and later-stage work 1443 01:09:20,992 --> 01:09:23,200 on a single research project, based upon what they're 1444 01:09:23,200 --> 01:09:26,319 discovering and finding. 1445 01:09:26,319 --> 01:09:27,939 The National Institutes of Health 1446 01:09:27,939 --> 01:09:29,960 is pretty much a basic research organization, 1447 01:09:29,960 --> 01:09:32,402 but when you go to the National Institutes of Health, 1448 01:09:32,402 --> 01:09:33,819 you don't apply to them for money. 1449 01:09:33,819 --> 01:09:38,200 You apply to the National Cancer Institute. 1450 01:09:38,200 --> 01:09:42,340 So you're not applying to the National Institute Let's Go 1451 01:09:42,340 --> 01:09:44,170 Have Fun in the Laboratory. 1452 01:09:44,170 --> 01:09:46,450 You're applying to the National Cancer Institute. 1453 01:09:46,450 --> 01:09:50,979 So there is some use-inspired elements, 1454 01:09:50,979 --> 01:09:54,510 even in a pretty basic research organization like NIH. 1455 01:10:02,520 --> 01:10:05,187 How about a closing point, Sanam? 1456 01:10:05,187 --> 01:10:05,770 AUDIENCE: Yes. 1457 01:10:05,770 --> 01:10:08,440 AUDIENCE: Can I ask a follow-up really quick? 1458 01:10:08,440 --> 01:10:11,440 You mentioned that this has now become sort of the seminal work 1459 01:10:11,440 --> 01:10:13,665 in science technology policy. 1460 01:10:13,665 --> 01:10:14,290 I was curious-- 1461 01:10:14,290 --> 01:10:15,100 WILLIAM BONVILLIAN: That Stokes is? 1462 01:10:15,100 --> 01:10:15,300 AUDIENCE: Yeah. 1463 01:10:15,300 --> 01:10:16,910 WILLIAM BONVILLIAN: Yes, it is. 1464 01:10:16,910 --> 01:10:17,500 AUDIENCE: I was wondering if you could 1465 01:10:17,500 --> 01:10:19,480 talk about the immediate reception 1466 01:10:19,480 --> 01:10:22,320 when he published it-- or when it was published posthumously. 1467 01:10:22,320 --> 01:10:23,320 WILLIAM BONVILLIAN: War. 1468 01:10:27,550 --> 01:10:30,050 A fundamental ethos of scientists 1469 01:10:30,050 --> 01:10:34,310 is we're doing basic fundamental research, exploratory research. 1470 01:10:34,310 --> 01:10:37,370 Data has enormous value. 1471 01:10:37,370 --> 01:10:41,780 And here's Stokes telling us that we're missing something. 1472 01:10:41,780 --> 01:10:45,560 Shove it was a lot of the reaction. 1473 01:10:45,560 --> 01:10:48,290 Nobody quite said that, because Stokes was dying of leukemia. 1474 01:10:48,290 --> 01:10:52,280 But that was pretty much the tenor. 1475 01:10:52,280 --> 01:10:55,370 And that's still a ongoing debate here. 1476 01:10:55,370 --> 01:10:58,370 MIT, in some ways, is a very unique institution, 1477 01:10:58,370 --> 01:11:02,930 because at the beginning, at the foundational moment in 1860s, 1478 01:11:02,930 --> 01:11:05,240 it attempted to integrate engineering and science. 1479 01:11:05,240 --> 01:11:07,910 Remember we talked about at the very beginning-- 1480 01:11:07,910 --> 01:11:12,910 engineering is organized around-- 1481 01:11:12,910 --> 01:11:15,610 in the 19th century, it was making stuff. 1482 01:11:15,610 --> 01:11:16,750 It was doing things. 1483 01:11:16,750 --> 01:11:18,760 That's what engineering was all about. 1484 01:11:18,760 --> 01:11:21,160 Science was natural philosophy. 1485 01:11:21,160 --> 01:11:22,630 It was observational. 1486 01:11:22,630 --> 01:11:26,230 It was understanding how the natural world operates. 1487 01:11:26,230 --> 01:11:29,170 MIT attempted to bring these two fields together and put them 1488 01:11:29,170 --> 01:11:30,730 on a continuum. 1489 01:11:30,730 --> 01:11:34,780 So there may be a pure natural scientist at MIT-- 1490 01:11:34,780 --> 01:11:38,800 and there are-- and there may be some pure engineers, 1491 01:11:38,800 --> 01:11:41,710 but mostly, they're all on a continuum together. 1492 01:11:41,710 --> 01:11:45,640 And the organizational mechanism that MIT uses to do that 1493 01:11:45,640 --> 01:11:47,980 is not the departments. 1494 01:11:47,980 --> 01:11:50,493 So most universities have the departments 1495 01:11:50,493 --> 01:11:51,910 at their core, which are organized 1496 01:11:51,910 --> 01:11:54,130 around single scientific fields. 1497 01:11:54,130 --> 01:11:55,660 Departments are important at MIT, 1498 01:11:55,660 --> 01:11:57,400 because they determine credentialing, 1499 01:11:57,400 --> 01:11:59,830 and do you have a job, and can you teach, 1500 01:11:59,830 --> 01:12:01,200 and what are you going to teach. 1501 01:12:01,200 --> 01:12:02,500 They're important. 1502 01:12:02,500 --> 01:12:06,970 But the really powerful elements are the labs at MIT, 1503 01:12:06,970 --> 01:12:09,310 and they integrate all kinds of fields, 1504 01:12:09,310 --> 01:12:11,920 and they are use-driven. 1505 01:12:11,920 --> 01:12:14,290 They are very much results-driven. 1506 01:12:14,290 --> 01:12:16,660 So they're bringing together science and engineering 1507 01:12:16,660 --> 01:12:20,380 on a continuum, but with a set of organized purposes. 1508 01:12:20,380 --> 01:12:23,770 So it's a pretty unique organizational model. 1509 01:12:23,770 --> 01:12:27,610 It's not the pervasive model in US universities. 1510 01:12:27,610 --> 01:12:35,360 So this debate doesn't really break out that much at MIT, 1511 01:12:35,360 --> 01:12:38,270 because MIT already did the integration. 1512 01:12:38,270 --> 01:12:40,880 But at many other places, it's an ongoing debate. 1513 01:12:43,600 --> 01:12:45,190 So Sanam, a closing thought? 1514 01:12:45,190 --> 01:12:48,325 I keep-- what do you think? 1515 01:12:48,325 --> 01:12:49,700 AUDIENCE: Something that's really 1516 01:12:49,700 --> 01:12:51,075 in my mind, especially right now, 1517 01:12:51,075 --> 01:12:53,663 is just the direction that this debate is going to take on, 1518 01:12:53,663 --> 01:12:56,080 especially considering you've got to go through the budget 1519 01:12:56,080 --> 01:12:56,705 and everything. 1520 01:12:56,705 --> 01:12:59,760 So I think that means a lot for a lot of areas 1521 01:12:59,760 --> 01:13:02,170 that are outside the reach of market in general. 1522 01:13:02,170 --> 01:13:05,860 And especially with science funding, 1523 01:13:05,860 --> 01:13:08,780 it seems like defense is the clear winner 1524 01:13:08,780 --> 01:13:11,170 with this new budget. 1525 01:13:11,170 --> 01:13:13,530 So I think that that kind of might 1526 01:13:13,530 --> 01:13:15,768 signal a re-prioritization that is 1527 01:13:15,768 --> 01:13:17,560 going to have some interesting implications 1528 01:13:17,560 --> 01:13:18,823 for this whole debate. 1529 01:13:18,823 --> 01:13:20,990 WILLIAM BONVILLIAN: That's a really important point. 1530 01:13:20,990 --> 01:13:24,700 This is a pretty seminal moment in US scientific history. 1531 01:13:24,700 --> 01:13:28,000 So the organizational set of assumptions 1532 01:13:28,000 --> 01:13:29,770 that the Vannevar Bush put into place 1533 01:13:29,770 --> 01:13:34,170 at the close of World War II of federal support for research, 1534 01:13:34,170 --> 01:13:35,290 it's really being-- 1535 01:13:35,290 --> 01:13:36,880 in question now. 1536 01:13:36,880 --> 01:13:39,820 And this is the largest cutback of a federal science 1537 01:13:39,820 --> 01:13:43,090 support in history that's now been proposed. 1538 01:13:43,090 --> 01:13:45,490 Is the model ending? 1539 01:13:45,490 --> 01:13:49,810 Is this amazing system of federally-supported research 1540 01:13:49,810 --> 01:13:53,770 universities-- is that being phased out? 1541 01:13:53,770 --> 01:13:56,680 So it's a very critical time to consider these questions. 1542 01:13:56,680 --> 01:13:58,490 This is the model that we've had up to now. 1543 01:13:58,490 --> 01:14:00,160 This is the first time I've really 1544 01:14:00,160 --> 01:14:06,310 seen a pretty fundamental hit on that model. 1545 01:14:06,310 --> 01:14:09,030 Now, whether Congress takes it or not, we'll see. 1546 01:14:09,030 --> 01:14:12,150 It's going to be playing out in the next few months.