Vannevar Bush

You might wonder who Vannevar Bush was and why there might be any interest in him.

  

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People have a tendency to believe that the advance of civilization from naked nut gatherers to designers of AI data centers was a sort of inevitable path, a kind of evolution. Aspects of that may well have been but in the recent past almost all of the changes and developments in society are the product of decisions made by influential individuals. Bush was one of the most influential.

 In Science, The Endless Frontier, his 1945 report to the president of the United States, Bush called for an expansion of government support for science, and he pressed for the creation of the National Science Foundation.

Some quotes from his report:

If the colleges, universities and research institutes are to meet the rapidly increasing demands of industry and Government for new scientific knowledge, their basic research should be strengthened by the use of public funds.

A permanent Science Advisory Board should be created to consult with these scientific bureaus and to advise the executive and legislative branches of Government as to the policies and budgets of Government agencies engaged in scientific research.

The time has come, however, for a careful evaluation of the questions raised by direct Federal aid to private institutions. Our universities clearly stand in need of increased financial support if they are to strengthen their basic contributions to the scientific life of the Nation. Financial aid may also be required to speed up the transition between basic discoveries in university laboratories and their practical industrial applications. The committee has therefore felt compelled to examine from the standpoint of public policy the question: Is a  substantial increase in Federal financial aid to scientific research in educational and other nonprofit research institutions necessary and desirable?

The Bush recommendations were adopted. Billions of dollars have been awarded, especially to the members of the American Association of Universities, whose purpose is to secure federal funding for their members. They have been hugely successful at this. It's doubtful that Bush would have been able to predict that a prostrate China, a conquered colony of Imperial Japan, would, less than 80 years later, be considered a threat to the US and its ally Japan. But he was aware that there would be some threat from somewhere. 

"Science, The Endless Frontier" seems now to be a strange name for the report. While there will probably be research into biological mysteries for many years to come, most of the issues in chemistry and physics are well under control. The efforts have turned to the trivial, translating scrolls damaged by volcanic eruptions, authenticating the artists of paintings, intercepting the light from stars millions of light years away. Keeping up with the Chinese in the artificial intelligence arena is part of that nonsense.