Tuesday, June 28, 2005

Rapid Change

Responsible Nanotechnology talks about how the next 30 years will see as much change as the last 100. If the past is any indication the discoveries powering the last decade of that period will be developed in the second decade and the stuff done in the first decade will mostly be foundational but technologically useless at the end of the 30 year period.

What is to be done?

New technologies should be retarded to some extent. Something better is likely to come along and the capital put into early technology would be to some extent wasted.

Practically this means subsidize R&D thru pilot production. Do not subsidize markets.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Who should "retard" new technologies? The developers themselves, voluntarily? Or someone else, using force?

M. Simon said...

Investors should limit their investments to immediately profitable ventures.

Technologies that take over five years to get to market represent a very high risk of technological obsolesence.

Of course the #1 investor with no conception of technological risk is the US Government. i.e. Congress Critters. They don't do due diligence.