Delivering remarks at Hudson Valley Community College in Troy, NY, today, President Obama noted the importance of the U.S. remaining an innovation leaders and how his Administration hopes to continue fostering that. Here’s a snippet with some remarks relevant to the computing community:
One key to strengthening education, entrepreneurship, and innovation in communities like Troy is to harness the full power of the internet. That means faster and more widely available broadband as well as rules to ensure that we preserve the fairness and openness that led to the flourishing of the internet in the first place. Today, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski is announcing a set of principles to preserve an open internet in which all Americans can participate and benefit. I am pleased that he is taking this step. It is an important reminder that the role of government is to provide investment that spurs innovation and common-sense ground rules to ensure that there is a level playing field for all comers who seek to contribute their innovations.
And we have to think about the networks we need today, but also the networks well want tomorrow. Thats why Ive proposed grants through the National Science Foundation and through the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency which helped develop the internet to explore the next communications breakthroughs, whatever they may be. And thats why Ive appointed the first-ever Chief Technology Officer, charged with looking at ways technology can spur innovations that help government do a better and more efficient job.
We must also strengthen our commitment to research, including basic research, which has been badly neglected for decades. The fact is, basic research may not pay off immediately. It may not pay off for years. And when it does, the rewards are often broadly shared, enjoyed by those who bore its costs but also by those who did not. Thats why the private sector generally under-invests in basic science, and why the public sector must invest in its stead. While the risks may be large, so are the rewards for our economy and our society. It was basic research in the photoelectric effect that would one day lead to solar panels. It was basic research in physics that would eventually produce the CAT scan. The calculations of todays GPS satellites are based on the equations Einstein put to paper more than a century ago.
When we fail to invest in research, we fail to invest in the future. Yet, since the peak of the Space Race in the 1960s, our national commitment to research and development has steadily fallen as a share of our national income. That is why I have set a goal of putting a full three percent of our Gross Domestic Product our national income into research and development, surpassing the commitment we made when President Kennedy challenged this nation to send a man to the moon. Toward this goal, the Recovery Act has helped achieve the largest increase in basic research in history. And this month the National Institutes of Health will award more than a billion dollars in research grants through the Recovery Act focused on what we can learn from the mapping of the human genome in order to treat diseases that affect millions of Americans, from cancer to heart disease. I also want to urge Congress to fully fund the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, DARPA, which has since its creation been a source of cutting-edge breakthroughs from that early internet to stealth technology.
As we invest in the building blocks of innovation, from the classroom to the laboratory, it is also essential that we have competitive and vibrant markets that promote innovation as well. Education and research help foster new ideas, but it takes fair and free markets to turn those ideas into industries.
We’ve posted his full remarks in the extended entry. As you’ll see in the coming days as we begin to post more on the appropriations process, there’s still positive sentiment in the Administration and the Congress for the federal government’s role in supporting basic research and its payoff in the economy. But translating that positive sentiment into robust funding for basic research is tricky and there are a number of hurdles along the way. So it helps that the President continues to shine a light on the issue and that articles like this great piece in today’s Los Angeles Times continue to highlight the importance of federal support for basic research. Here’s a bit from that LA Times article, written by columnist Michael Hiltzik:
[Bob Taylor's] experience underscores the importance of a government role in fields like basic research, which profit-seeking enterprises tend to shun.
“Industry generally avoids long-term research because it entails risk,” the veteran computer scientist Ed Lazowska told Congress a few years ago. Why? Because it’s hard to predict the results of such research, and since it has to be published and publicly validated, corporations can’t capitalize on their investments in isolation.
Yet once the research reaches a certain point, private industry piles in — Lazowska cited a National Research Council list of 19 multibillion-dollar industries that had been incubated with federal funding, generally via university grants — including the Internet, Web browsers and cellphones — before becoming commercially viable. Taylor’s ARPAnet was eventually turned over to the National Science Foundation, which in 1991 opened what was then known as NSFnet to commercial exploitation. Four years later, the dot-com boom was underway.
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