>
> Yes, but it also costs money, LOTS OF MONEY!
>The hope for economic gain is what drives a
>large part of R&D. Money people are almost by
>definition short-sighted. The very best way, in
>our current economy, to make money is to be the
>first one to implement and market a technology.
>Unfortunately, this comes at a pretty hefty cost
>to society, the environment and our future lives.

What I see as the greatest problem is the desire for "short-term" gains. It is certainly not a bad thing to be the first to market with a faster silicon chip. Businesses need to have income in order to fund R&D, of course, and the best way to do that is to look at the "short-term" gains. But looking *only* at short-term gains will eventually leave you stagnant. There is only so far we can go with silicon microprocessors, and eventually we're going to have to completely abandon the technology and move to something else (like photo-electric computers [if I've got the term right] or quantum computing) if we hope to make faster and "better" computers. The *greatest* gains will be realized by the company that brings this *new* technology to the market first. And this requires long-term R&D. What happens to Intel if they bring out their Pentium IV-4000 at the same time a new, unheard of startup company comes out with a quantum computer? Intel goes down the crapper, no matter how much faster their new chip is than previous silicon chips; the quantum computer blows them all away.

This brings this argument full-circle to the point made before of massive explotation of resources for short-term gain. It should be obvious that those short-term gains aren't going to offset the long-term losses.


> I'm sorry if this is not argued well, but I
>couldn't compress my 20 pages of thoughts very
>easily.

Seemed pretty good to me.