Archive for: April 2005
§ ¶NARST Abstracts Online
NARST is running this week in Dallas, and abstracts to all sessions are online. Interestingly, this is billed as a way to save printing costs on the published program. As opposed to the very real benefit of putting the content online.
Hopefully they’ll leave the abstract up well after the conference ends.
§ ¶DARPA Academic Funding Drops
Ouch. The Times reports that DARPA computer science funding targeted at universities has dropped sharply. DARPA grants often gave researchers leeway to pursue open-ended basic research; a good chunk of funding for Northwestern’s Institute for the Learning Sciences (and thus, some of my graduate support) came from DARPA. (No link to ILS, which was absorbed into the Learning Sciences and Computer Science programs and no longer has a valid web site. Kind of a shame.)
The agency cited a number of reasons for the decline: increased reliance on corporate research; a need for more classified projects since 9/11; Congress’s decision to end controversial projects like Total Information Awareness because of privacy fears; and the shift of some basic research to advanced weapons systems development.
The impact of this change can’t really be empirically measured, but remember, DARPA funded Arpanet, which became the Internet. Shifting funding to corporate research and weapons development doesn’t necessary carry the same potential for breakthroughs that benefit the public good.