[dkarapetyan]

I don't think Oculus Rift is going anywhere. They bungled that project pretty well. My question was more about your assumption about getting some kind of cash cow and then milking it to provide for "moonshots". It is one model that works but it's not the only one. Well, actually, it's debatable whether it works or not.

[melling]

What you think about Oculus is irrelevant. FB has the money to see it through, along with dozens of other similar projects. Feel free to explain the other models.

[dkarapetyan]

State sponsored fundamental research for one. Pretty much all of the actual computing innovation was a direct result of fundamental research that was sponsored by the state either directly or indirectly. Heck, modern compilers have a direct line back to Grace Hopper working at the naval research lab.

Commercializing stuff is great and all but there is no point in pretending it is the same or equal to the kind of innovative work that consistently happens at research universities and arguably a lot of the future is invented there even if it is not commercialized.

Also what are these dozens of other projects Facebook is currently innovating on? I do see a lot of duplicated effort across google, facebook, apple, and microsoft when it comes to AI research though. This is why I don't quite get how people can argue for commercial innovation and market efficiency all in the same sentence or paragraph when there is obvious and clear evidence to the contrary.

[melling]

I guess you don't understand the value behind the trillions of dollars of R&D spent over the past 50 years by tech companies like Xerox, Intel, Microsoft, IBM, AT&T, Google, etc

[dkarapetyan]

Not really. I do see a staggering amount of waste though. Duplicated effort across the board, re-invention of the same basic building blocks re-packaged and re-branded, billions spent on patent suits, billions spent on lobbying, etc. Competition in basic innovation does not make sense. In fact I'm not even sure how much of those "trillions" contributed to actual innovation. I suspect a proper analysis would reveal an extremely poor efficiency ratio and only a few keystones that could trace their history directly back to a university research projects and other state sponsored projects.

[mpbm]

LOL, you see "a staggering amount of waste" in commercial entities and thing the way to find efficiency is to look to the government? Like government-sponsored research is going to be more efficient? That's a good one.

[foldr]

Basic research is exactly the kind of thing that markets are bad at doing, so it really wouldn't be surprising. Which country do you see as a model of the success of privately funded research? As far as I can see, all countries that are making significant contributions to science are spending lots of government money on it.