REM%MIT-MC@sri-unix.UUCP (04/10/84)
From: Robert Elton Maas <REM @ MIT-MC> Here's another idea that came to mind on why spinoff from space is more effective than direct projects to develop wonderful plastics etc. (sorry for length, I don't know how to boil these things down). First, motivation. It's terribly to work years to develop something and not see anybody use it until you're dead and buried, or to see no use for it while you're working on it and FEAR you'll be dead and buried before anybody finds a use for it. Sometimes in pure mathematics something is so beautiful you just do it without any prospect for real use [how's that for an understatement!!! sometimes should really be 99% of the time in mathematics, but in applied math like data compression or data representation you still sometimes come up with a practical method that is so mathematically beautiful you don't need an actual use to get gratification]. But in normal technology such as developing plastics, it's awfully demoralizing to spend a couple years working on something and then see it just set to pasture when you're done, as if you've just waisted two years of your life, it would have been more fun to masturbate those two years if you could have gotten paid for it. - But with a task to develop some product for a need that already exists, such as plastic for Apollo cockpit that won't burn suddenly and kill the astronauts, you get to see your work used immediately after you finish it, instant intellectual gratifiction, the true work ethic at its best. Second, it's awful hard to really get the bugs out of something if nobody ever uses it in real practice. In programing I am frequently very lonely because nobody wants to try the program I wrote even though I think it's neat, then four years later when I can't even remember how it worked somebody finally uses it and finds a hundred obvious bugs that should have been worked out at the start instead of four years later. I know that if you have only programmer-testing, not even alpha testing (your co-workers), you can't perfect your work, and wit only alpha testing you still don't get it really right. The result of research for something that is never going to be used is shoddy work, not just in programming but in just about anything, in fact moreso in other fields where the developer simply doesn't have the facilities to properly test the product that has been developed. Third, the synergism between the two above, a conscientious worker who knows nobody will use what he developed and it'll sit shoddy in pasture for years before it is totally forgotten, really won't have any reason for doing good work, and thus won't have any incentive to work at all because shoddy work really isn't fun if you know it. All in all, you don't really contribute to society or economy or quality of life or peace of mind or work ethic or job satisfaction by useless make-work. Only true scientific work where you have a bunch of peers to review your work has a chance of succeeding in the absence of real-world feedback. I can't imagine peers evaluating a new plastic in the same critical way that peers would review a new quantum gauge theory. Thus I agree for technological development, you really need to have a testable goal in mind, not just some random useless-product goal, thus I agree putting money into space is better than putting money into abstract "better-plastic" R&D. <Opinion of REM, subject to critique, let me hear your comments: REMRFC>