Comment by AfterHIA

Hey Rick. Excuse me for the long reply time. Our cinema program at our local university has been eating up a lot of my HN time. I appreciate your response in turn.

1) The relevant portions come in 1973. By 1969 we see developments in this direction. I have links but thanks to the Peter Thiel shithead take over of search I'm finding it hard to find the relevant literature on the NSF website. I found this article informative:

https://goodscienceproject.org/articles/a-note-on-the-changi...

2) From what I've been able to gather most of the rationale of restricting research came in response to the Vietnam War. It was misguided but the idea was that the role of ARPA (to become DARPA) should be concentrated strictly on military projects to prevent waste and overspending. As, "lefty that likes psychedelic rock" I get how at the time this might have made sense. Mansfield was Senate majority leader and given the popular anti-war/military sentiment I can see how the, "hippies and beats" might have seen ARPA as a menace. It's worth noting that they didn't have the incredible hindsight at the time that would include seeing the ARPANET evolve into the Internet or Engelbart's project eventually becoming the Macintosh.

As for your last paragraph-- I agree. NSF should have a larger budget. Honestly I don't think that in today's political climate that, "restarting IPTO-ARPA like it was in the 1960s" is actually a good idea. Even the idea of creating a new Xerox PARC was tried by our namesake Y Combinator and from, "what I can gather" the project was a massive failure. Like I said-- we get to a point where discussing what motivates society to fund the education of the Paperts, Kays, Engelbarts, and Brenda Laurels of the world becomes a discussion about ideology. I'm with you for creating a, "NEF" or a peacetime OSRD. Honestly in some sense if critics are right about the United States being in a state of, "cold/pre civil war" this might become necessary. I'm with you in this regard. The issue is motivating the powers that be and those with the capital to realistically fund projects like this to do so. Historically this requires either a period of unprecedented peace or a war. Given the current situation I'm think that the later is more likely. This really pains me as a millennial but as a wise man once said, "we must deal with the world as it is not as we would like it to be."

Thanks for the worthwhile exchange. Wishing you and yours the best this evening ricksunny.