[Xmca-l] Re: Where bureaucrats feast

[Robert Lake]

I love this line Michael . *"**It made me think, that bureaucrats feast in
vineyards planted by visionaries.*"
You might consider writing a piece for the *Chronicle of Higher Ed*. on
Bush with this in the title.
RL


On Fri, May 30, 2014 at 12:42 PM, Glassman, Michael <glassman.13@osu.edu>
wrote:

>
> Just an interesting discovery maybe some people might be interested in.  I
> have been doing some research on Vannevar Bush who it seems was one of the
> most extraordinary people of the 2oth century - and yet I had never heard
> of him until a few years ago - funny that.
>
> It was Bush who more or less envisioned the information age and the
> Internet in a short, very public article in 1945 called "As We May Think."
>  What I just found out is that Bush - who was chief engineer for the allies
> during WW II also was instrumental in developing our current university
> research system including the NSF (and I guess by extension the NIH).  Bush
> wanted research to be funded separately from commercial interests because
> he believed really worthwhile research as associative, where researchers
> followed ideas wherever those ideas took them.  There should be no absolute
> end point because that would destroy innovation.   Innovation is in large
> part serendipitous, allowing human thinking to take ideas where they may go.
>
> I think today how projects are funded with specific outcomes and intense
> methodological sections showing how you are going to get there, tightly
> controlled, with not an inch left for the odd left turn.  More and more
> emphasis on a preordained bottom line (so of course there is not
> innovation).
>
> It made me think, that bureaucrats feast in vineyards planted by
> visionaries.
>
> For what it's worth.
>
> Michael
>
>