[d--b]

Mmmh, I am not a specialist and I don't know the numbers, but it seems to me that fundamental research is not less active than it used to be.

Physics made a lot of progress in materials (nano tech, weird polymers, and so on), in building batteries, in finding the higgs boson and gravitational waves, and I'm sure plenty of other fields.

Medical research has advanced a lot with the invention of CRISPR.

CS has grown a lot in AI and quantum computing...

[wallflower]

If you read the science fiction series "The Three-Body Problem" (highly recommended), it makes a very compelling argument that fundamental research is the most important investment in the future.

For example, fusion drives, not traditional stored rocket propellant engines, will be necessary to navigate between planets and the outer solar system. Also, existing known behaviors/laws of physics aside, the book posits that colonization of other planets/stars in the universe requires achieving light speed travel (along with hibernation technology).

However, the other argument the book series makes is that there needs to be a strong motivator to get all the countries and economies of the world to focus on fundamental research and applying it.

[nine_k]

The mother planet reaps no material benefits from colonizing another star. Those groups who colonize it get a world if their own.

So interests of Earth governments are not aligned with star travel, and only marginally aligned with colonizing e.g. Mars. Those groups who want to ho there will have to do it themselves. (See Elon Musk.)

[wallflower]

> The mother planet reaps no material benefits from colonizing another star.

In the book series, without giving away too much of the plot, the handful of countries that acquire and develop spaceflight technology/space bases become political powers in their own right.

If you watch or read "The Expanse", the political shifts are similar. The colony on Mars, in particular, is particularly threatening and powerful.

[gech]

Hmm. What about an escape mechanism for its people at least? Or scarce mineral resources that could be brought back?

[nine_k]

Scarce minerals from the asteroid belt? Already in R&D (google "Planetary Resources"). Shipping anything in bulk from another star system? Unlikely even with the fabled "teleportation" tech.

[klmr]

> Medical research has advanced a lot with the invention of CRISPR.

You are overestimating the importance of CRISPR. Don’t get me wrong — it is hugely important and innovative. But it’s not even the most important biomedical research innovation of recent years (I’d give that title to RNA-seq or more generally next-gen sequencing technology; but there are several contenders).

But at any rate all the innovations you list are — at least partly — driven by fundamental research in the public sector, not private companies.

[patall]

I beg to differ, it is hard to overestimate the importance of CRISPR. There have been gene editors like zink-fingers or TALENs before but CRISPR is in its total capability is a true breakthrough.

NGS on the other side is more or less a gradual development. While the exact technology may be novel or unique the whole process is not as can be seen by the various competing technologies that existed and still do exist within about 1 or 2 orders of magnitude in pricing over time. And gene expression read-out especially is not that novel at all given arrays existed for some time. Sure, the single applications are cool but quite a few could be done with related technologies.

But sure, in the end its not whether one thing matters more than the another as all together make a great progress.

[klmr]

> NGS on the other side is more or less a gradual development.

While true that’s not really relevant. What’s relevant is that it has completely revolutionised biomedical research. And although CRISPR has the potential of doing the same, it’s just telling that RNA-seq (and related technologies) have become so routine that they’ve effectively spawned new fields of research. Together with WGS (and preceded by microarrays), the new sequencing technologies have led to a revolution of how science is done: because most of the science here is done at a computer. CRISPR, by contrast, is “merely” a new molecular biology tool. A very powerful, for sure, and one that opens up completely new avenues of research. But it doesn’t fundamentally change the way we do science. NGS has.

[__s]

Cryptography has also been progressing well. Same for various encoding formats; Opus is both better quality per bit & uses less CPU than Vorbis

[tribler]

> this matters because most basic research ends up being commercially useful eventually

That is quite a positive view. As a university professor I see a lot of speculative work. It is presented as fundamental, but makes assumption which do not hold in the real world. Hence a lot is mostly ignored.