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A lot of you touched on what I was thinking about. The idea is that the different technologies would be broken in to broad categories and you could focus research in a given area (perhaps give percents of your overall research to different areas of research).
Things like music aren't really "research", but you can fund smart people to sit around and make music instead of having them do other things. So in a sense you can cultivate artists by providing schools to allow them to develop. You can also have random geniuses like Beethoven who are just so adept at it that they leaving lasting cultural impacts.
I think Great People would generally give you a boost to your research. In a sense letting you roll the dice more to progress. I've always thought that people like Einstein don't necessarily fulfill their potential. What if they don't discover their talent? Or what if they work on something that ultimately proves worthless? To me research implies you're trying to figure something out that you don't know. And you might just blow a lot of resources and get no return.
An example would be something like the Segway. Dean Kamen saw it as a way to revolutionize city design moving it back to a focus on pedestrians (or segway riders) and removing roads entirely. There would be massive cut backs in pollution and oil usage.
What he ended up with was a novelty item, that's at best slightly better than a toy. No revolution in thing... not even any evolution really.
It was a good idea, but ultimately even though the technology worked, it didn't take us in the direction he thought it would. In my mind it sits with a lot of promises of the late 1990s with refrigerators that would call out for food that would be redelivered before i knew I was running out, and appliances that would call out for repair all connected by the internet. Interesting ideas in theory, but as far as major appliances go, (at least to me) 2006 looks a lot like 1996 with a few cool gizmos added here and there. Computers and home recording technology are the only two areas I've noticed major advances in appliances.
As for government research, the I know the U.S. government has a pretty large research budget. Agencies like DARPA and NASA have research as their primary mission. I know all of the Agencies under the Department of Defense as well as Department of Homeland security either have laboratories they run themselves or they fund universities and corporate contractors to do research. I imagine most governments would have at least a few areas they focus research funding into. A lot of research is private (drug research for instance), but the government generally funds research in critical areas.
Another good point is that the further you go back in time, the less directed research you have. Perhaps before a certain age it can use a different system where you spontaneously discover certain technologies across the spectrum without any ability to direct research. As you approach modern times you could gain more control?
Wow, this is more complicated than I thought
Things like music aren't really "research", but you can fund smart people to sit around and make music instead of having them do other things. So in a sense you can cultivate artists by providing schools to allow them to develop. You can also have random geniuses like Beethoven who are just so adept at it that they leaving lasting cultural impacts.
I think Great People would generally give you a boost to your research. In a sense letting you roll the dice more to progress. I've always thought that people like Einstein don't necessarily fulfill their potential. What if they don't discover their talent? Or what if they work on something that ultimately proves worthless? To me research implies you're trying to figure something out that you don't know. And you might just blow a lot of resources and get no return.
An example would be something like the Segway. Dean Kamen saw it as a way to revolutionize city design moving it back to a focus on pedestrians (or segway riders) and removing roads entirely. There would be massive cut backs in pollution and oil usage.
What he ended up with was a novelty item, that's at best slightly better than a toy. No revolution in thing... not even any evolution really.
It was a good idea, but ultimately even though the technology worked, it didn't take us in the direction he thought it would. In my mind it sits with a lot of promises of the late 1990s with refrigerators that would call out for food that would be redelivered before i knew I was running out, and appliances that would call out for repair all connected by the internet. Interesting ideas in theory, but as far as major appliances go, (at least to me) 2006 looks a lot like 1996 with a few cool gizmos added here and there. Computers and home recording technology are the only two areas I've noticed major advances in appliances.
As for government research, the I know the U.S. government has a pretty large research budget. Agencies like DARPA and NASA have research as their primary mission. I know all of the Agencies under the Department of Defense as well as Department of Homeland security either have laboratories they run themselves or they fund universities and corporate contractors to do research. I imagine most governments would have at least a few areas they focus research funding into. A lot of research is private (drug research for instance), but the government generally funds research in critical areas.
Another good point is that the further you go back in time, the less directed research you have. Perhaps before a certain age it can use a different system where you spontaneously discover certain technologies across the spectrum without any ability to direct research. As you approach modern times you could gain more control?
Wow, this is more complicated than I thought
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