About a quarter century ago, the following thoughts struck me:
• Are we going to hell in a handbasket?
• Why are we going to hell in a handbasket?
• Is this what's supposed to be happening?
• Who else has figured this out?
• Is it better to be a tree or a mushroom?
It seemed clear to me that the huge resource troves which had fueled the past couple of centuries of growth were expiring. And that without them we'd likely at best be holding ground, if not losing it, by and by.
My own constitution is to be a tree: I'd rather build things up than tear them down. I catted around for a bit looking for work in renewables, transit, or anything remotely similar, but found the jobs were very few and the pay worse. I opted for the next-best thing and ended up in one of the two great catabolic endeavors: software and IT (the other is, of course, finance). I've been very disenchanted with what Silicon Valley's turned out over the past decade.
And so long as we're relying on the naive market principle to guide us, I think that's the best we can hope for. I'm not sure alternatives can do a whole lot better, but some level of guided state or higher-level directed investment and planning might help. Or not.
As for the patronage funding model: I suspect that's going to be what's increasingly common, particularly for science and the arts, possibly also technical ventures. If you think about it, it's a regression back about 150 - 200 years.
It'll be interesting, though, over the next 10 - 200 years.
My work is in the broad area of my research (e.g. power systems), and while there's no direct overlap, they aren't entirely different spheres. I quite like my work and I find the industry contact important, so while I could easily live on 1-2 days of work, I've chosen a work/research split that is more biased towards work. Having said that, as a freelancer, I have a fairly flexible arrangement and some weeks I don't work at all.
The key advantage of this approach is that I am not at all bonded to the university. I don't have to participate in the politics of academia, grant funding, the pressure to publish, progress reporting etc, which I see the other grad students struggling with. I suppose I still have to massage the egos of tenured professors, but I can live with that (as a consultant, I'm always massaging peoples' egos anyway). The bottom line is that having independent funding insulates me from most of the pain of being a PhD student and gives me the freedom to pursue ideas that may lead to dead ends.
First, not everyone has admitted defeat. Maybe you just need to meet more people. Grad schools are just wrapping up admission season, and I'm totally inspired by the level of talent and quality of students I met this past few months.
Second, scientists are among the greatest beneficiaries of the information technology revolution. The most important instrument every scientist uses is a personal computer. Brenner says "The way to succeed is to get born at the right time and in the right place. If you can do that then you are bound to succeed. You have to be receptive and have some talent as well." This definitely feels like the right time and place to me.
Science may be the pursuit of knowledge, but that doesn't mean humans who work as scientists get to be privileged when it comes to allocation of resources. We will just have adapt to new ways of communicating why our work is important, and new ways of raising money [1]. Science is way more expensive than most people realize, but it costs millions, not billions to run a successful lab.
Anyway, we'll make it work. Just like our predecessors made it work when science budgets were a fraction of their current size.
[1] For example: YC-backed experiment.com
This is a perfect case of confirmation bias due to information asymmetry. They have been in school their whole lives and thus have only met the few successful people who've managed to land tenured positions. They haven't met any senior grad students who've spent decades in a lab being paid less than the lowest administrators, and dumped to the curb for a fresh batch as soon as their best years are spent.
I'm not a pessimist, but when the reality is bleak [1], I will not convince myself that everything is dandy. Will this change? Hopefully. When and how are the questions I'm most concerned with at the moment.
1. http://takingnote.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/09/04/a-dark-future...
Furthermore, the average person has no understanding of the history, practice, and effects of scientific research. They don't realize that the unbelievable technologies we enjoy today are a result of very concerted efforts throughout history to advance the state of our understanding. The iPhone is a result of the accumulation of every discovery made by mankind since the inception of our species. This is not what the average person thinks when they hold an iPhone. As such, I believe crowdfunding will be for a very small niche of like minded people. That does not compare to the resources available through taxation.
From the article:
“A Fred Sanger would not survive today’s world of science. With continuous reporting and appraisals, some committee would note that he published little of import between insulin in 1952 and his first paper on RNA sequencing in 1967 with another long gap until DNA sequencing in 1977. He would be labelled as unproductive, and his modest personal support would be denied. We no longer have a culture that allows individuals to embark on long-term—and what would be considered today extremely risky—projects.”
From Peter Higgs [1]:
"The emeritus professor ... published fewer than 10 papers after his groundbreaking work, which identified the mechanism by which subatomic material acquires mass, was published in 1964.
Higgs, 84, said he would almost certainly have been sacked had he not been nominated for the Nobel in 1980.
Edinburgh University's authorities then took the view, he later learned, that he "might get a Nobel prize – and if he doesn't we can always get rid of him".
Higgs said he became "an embarrassment to the department when they did research assessment exercises". A message would go around the department saying: "Please give a list of your recent publications." Higgs said: "I would send back a statement: 'None.' "
1. http://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/dec/06/peter-higgs-b...
That is very evidently wrong. Almost all major inventions around us are a result of at least some long term research.
Also, I don't see why anyone including the scientific community should feel entitled to any funding for long term research if no one sees any value in them.
Rest all sounds Obama like empty rhetoric to me.
Honestly, I don't know if this insanity will ever stop in our lifetimes. Profiteering has now become the number one profession of the developed world, and anything that does not generate short term profit is seen as wasteful. I increasingly fantasize about the days of the Manhattan and Apollo projects, where the state treated science as critical to its survival.
Let's look at ourselves: how many brilliant people are now scrambling to make web/social/mobile apps in hopes of getting acquired or hitting their IPO? Is this what these people would do if left to their own devices? Or would they become fascinated with the eternal undertaking of science, and make breakthroughs in fields which would change the way we understand the world?
All the brilliant people I know have admitted defeat, along the lines of "If you can't beatem, joinem." The only way they see research in their future is if they can become the next Bill Gates or Zuck, and have billions to spend at their discretion.
This is an extremely sad development. An entire generation of aspiring scientists (myself included) are shut out of the system, while parasites such as administrators and rent seekers suck the last bits of life from the dying government funding apparatus that they have successfully gamed.
Science is the eternal pursuit of truth. It is the very thing which distinguishes us as a species. The quest to understand ourselves and the universe is a fundamental drive of every human being which should be nurtured from birth. Increasingly, however, scientific pursuit is relegated to the sidelines in the quest for pure capitalism. A society focused upon profiteering can only have one end: fiscal and moral bankruptcy.