"Men Who Do Nothing But Think."
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If we kill the Java school (or more generally "University is knowledge worker trade-school") mentality, Universities will stop being able to signal their value through "owning" large numbers of researchers, and all the demand for innovation will shift back to corporations.
Companies that do basic research are a different kettle of fish. They make money on breakthroughs and innovation. Java schools make money on students, so the thinking is an entirely different kind - formalizing existing knowledge (so the students can study something more "academic"). Sure, you can formalize code as category theory, algebra, sets, and so on, but it's not exactly an out-of-box breakthrough. Also, the type of researchers you get are excellent students, not engineers who made innovations in the field and got kicked up to the lab.
But I meant to indict here more than just what you normally think of as "Java schools"—virtually all Universities are receptacles for students who go to them to get a high-paying (and high-status!) job, and thus virtually all Universities cater to those students. Java schools are just more upfront about it.
How Universities actually make their money is a combination of convincing students to study there, and receiving grants. Both of these rely on the status of the researchers in the employ of the University—even though the researchers (the Ph.Ds) are very infrequently the students' lecturers. Students pay not to learn from high-status people, but simply to coexist in an environment with them, and have the "status" of the institution rub off on them.
In order to reverse this process, we have to remove "has studied at high-status University X" as a judging criterion for high-status jobs. That may well be impossible, though, given how embedded the idea has become in our culture.
That's not true at MIT; are there any other exceptions to this sad pattern in research universities?
One of the advantages of the lowest tier schols that don't do (much) research is that their faculty are there to teach first and foremost. When the system works, when the instructor is sufficiently in command of his material, you get a better result than in the mid-tier schools.
Who does teach at these Universities? Almost all my lecturers where either current researchers or former researchers currently focusing on writing and teaching. I can only think of one or two courses where the lecturer didn't at least have (or was working towards) a relevant PhD.
One of the issues that with the transition from the industrial age to the information age is that our focus has shifted from industrial research to information research. Because so much of the information age is intangible it's unclear that real progress is happening.
Two things have happened that further hide these issues, the results of research are incrementally realized and the pace has increased to such a rate that it is simply expected. News is when the transistor density or aerial density does NOT double in a year.
Even with industrial research the issue is that no one is around to see the benefits. When someone figures out how to run a lights out factory they will be hailed as greedy instead of innovative.
Even the BP disaster is an example of corporate R&D, does anyone else find it incredible that we are repairing (or not repairing) an oil well that is 5,000 feet under water and there are no humans in sight? The fact that the disaster is even possible should be awe inspiring to the technological progress of humanity.
However, I think my first reaction to the depth that they were drilling was "That's fucking awesome!" rather than "that's fucking stupid." The stupid was finding out that they were taking this for granted now and skimping on the safety.
Speaking of, BP does a lot of R&D in the energy field themselves. Even the energy companies want to be in on alternative energy when it comes.
The oil companies are not stupid. There will come a day when it is no longer economically feasible to extract the remaining oil. Any company that hasn't diversified by then can turn off the lights and go home.
I wouldn't describe that as "technological progress". Technology is usually described as 1) controlling natural powers to 2) reach some purpose. The BP disaster fails to achieve both.
More generally, sloppy security standards are a strong sign that a technology is either not fully developed or not fully understood. This holds for engineering as well as for programming.
So the disaster is a sign of missing progress in technology.
In contrast, what we see with BP is a failed experiment that is out of control for months. It is not a demonstration of technological progressiveness. The experiment was falsely labeled as "technology" in order to receive more public trust when it was started.
This is a marketing trick we know from software companies as well. (Fortunately, many companies are honest in that regard.)
However, maybe it is just a question of wording, i.e. whether big, risky experiments count or don't count as technology. My personal understanding of technology implies some minimum degree on maturity. In particular, anticipatory acting should be at least possible.
In contrast, we've had 132 space shuttle launches, 2 of which killed everyone on board.
And yet "we" are completely unprepared for oil spills, needing months to recover from worst-case scenarios (and decades if not centuries to recover from the long-term damage). That isn't "progressive".
> we've had 132 space shuttle launches, 2 of which killed everyone on board
It is hard for me to see in how far these incidents are comparable.
The damage of space shuttle launches was local to the "experimental room" and was under control in the sense that "just" the shuttles were destroyed and nothing else. The crews were informed about the risk of that experiment and accepted to take the risk.
I mean...they make smartphones now, how does that make sense beyond "well, we locked a bunch of geeks in a room, and they thought this would be cool...so we did it!".
Or howabout google books? Or all the dark fibre they purchased...or the google datacenter in a shipping container things? Perhaps my vision is skewed as an outsider looking in, but google seems to make a lot of really cool things.
They seem to adhere to the "innovate now, monetize later" model, which is really cool.
I can imagine all kinds of accompanying benefits: a boost in the take up of scientific subjects in colleges and universities; talent that flourishes in an environment free of corporate profiteering; &c.
Philanthropy would be the only way to properly bootstrap this kind of 'startup'. But ultimately it could be civilization-changing!
The thing that sparked my curiosity was simply noticing the logo in strange places. Last week I saw Westinghouse branded Pyrex bakeware at a thriftstore. Years ago I found the logo on a residential home window indicating a security system. I've seen it in many other unexpected places.
Interesting, diverse company. I stand by the quality of this display, for what it's worth! Discontinued at Newegg but here it is:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824255...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westinghouse_Electric_Corporati...
It was probably actual borosilicate glass, too, not like the modern Pyrex-branded stuff which is just tempered soda-lime. But that's another story...
[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-neutral_pronoun#Historic...
I fully agree that it is an artifact from a different time. It wasn't considered to be sexist at the time and it wasn't intended to be sexist, but from todays point of view, it's definititely sexist.
It's interesting how our minds work alike in the same wrong ways, because I had pretty much the same train of thought.