An R&D problem

paul martin
Sep 8, 2018 · 1 min read

I keep a very keen eye on the PhD thesis output of my Alma mater. This week the first figure in one of them reminded of one diagram that I had used. But it was reference 230 which shocked me: thirty eight years earlier, the same year I wrote up, a similar thesis was produced but on a different substrate. In reality the results, to my eye, were effectively the same. Indeed in some respects the panoply of measurement equipment that had expanded in the second thesis made little difference. But it does not matter.

Contrast this with industrial research over the same period. The Integrated Circuit was coming along & now courtesy of Moore’s law — the most important straight line ever — it’s manufacture-ability means everyone has a mobile and access to everyone else. How times change.

And then there is Education itself. The luck in mine was a combination of laisser faire and, to quote Jim Baker, good fortune. Working against this now is the behemoth of dumb ideas. Yes, we have been here before but then there was an element of democratic accountability. If you stood in a field with your mates and railed about the Trinity so be it. The problem these days is that as Jordan Peterson says you don’t know who is waiting in the shadows, paid for by taxes and being bonkers.

A sense of wander

Product production

paul martin
A sense of wander
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