[sdiy] Real cause of DIY death

[Richard Wentk]

At 09:08 20/07/2005, Ian Fritz wrote:

>The budget part is a big problem, again because of the expensive equipment 
>needed to get down to the small scale.  Scientists now have to spend more 
>than half their time searching for funding. That was the main reason I 
>took an early retirement.

Won't argue with that. A lot of 18th and 19th century science was done by 
idle rich guys. Back then you could treat it as a serious hobby and still 
produce good work. Today you need a budget in the billions to even think 
about most experiments, and the idle rich guys aren't rich enough to be 
able to afford that.

When research is institutionalised and big budget it lacks the 
sprightliness you get when talented individuals can do everything they need 
on their own. Obviously a lot of good work still happens, but the pace of 
theoretical development seems very slow at the moment compared to a century 
ago.

>Your points are all true enough, but don't forget that no one had any idea 
>beforehand what the effect of inexpensive computing on the world would 
>be.  Guess I'm more optimistic than you.  Who knows what the next wave of 
>technology will bring as far as applications and paradigms?

Well, we'll see. But it's not just me that's less optimistic. New Scientist 
had a small feature a while back from someone who'd researched research 
trends, and found that the level of innovation per capita peaked at the 
turn of the century and declined rapidly after that, in spite of much 
higher funding.

This might or might not be related to arguments about a generally dumbed 
down population. Other countries - India, China - are much more 
enthusiastic about funding engineering, but I'm not sure they have the same 
kind of drive to do pure research and investigation that we do in the West.

Richard