I love the Nobel prize committees comment on the work of new Nobel physics laureates Konstantin Novoselov and Andre Geim, granted the prize for creating wafers of carbon that are a single atom thick.
As the Nobel committee said of the two scientists in its press release: "Playfulness is one of their hallmarks. With the building blocks they had at their disposal they attempted to create something new, sometimes even by just allowing their brains to meander aimlessly."
Of course, such research would be considered utterly pointless under a neoliberal cuts regime. It will go. No time for such frivolity: only proven commercial applications must be allowed.
But that’s because neoliberals don’t understand the true nature of the human condition. Or creativity.
And that lack of understanding; their incomprehension of the capacity to make a mistake and learn from it; their inability to see anything except an absolute cash value will be their downfall, at cost to us all.
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Proof once again of the idiocy of our finance dominated political so-called leaders, and their fellow travellers in the press and business. Everything has to be sacrificed to cut a deficit caused by the short term profit obsessed gambling of the City, which is the antithesis of the culture of experimentation shown by these scientists.
What we should spend money on is supporting the institutions that enable these people to do their ‘aimless meandering’; instead we pump billions into our wretched financial sector.
http://themamabee.com/2009/03/27/management-friday-googles-8020-innovation-model/
Seems Google can do the same.
If the neoliberal system supposedly discourages science and innovation, why has virtually every single major technological advance in recent years come from the USA?