Burgerland ideology seems to seriously believe that scientific progress depends on “disruptive innovator” billionaires and not actual fucking scientists. I think that ideology partially drives government (and private corporate) policy, which causes material conditions to worsen enough for actual fucking scientists to leave.
Based on what the people I know in academia/university research have told me, the research landscape I the US/canada is fuuuucked, too. There’s barely any federal/public funding and corporate partnerships where the research is increasingly risk-averse/uncreative are becoming the norm.
In Canada, the typical scholarship that graduate students are expected to fund themselves with haven’t changed in amount for 20 years. It’s been 17.5k/yr for master’s level students, and 20k-35k/yr for PhD students since 2003. In those 20 years, minimum wage has more than doubled in Canada, tuition has more than doubled, rent has tripled or more, faculty wages have doubled, etc… Everything is more expensive, and everyone else is earning more, but we are expected to live on the same 20k/yr as our supervisors did 20 years (which is now well below the Canadian poverty line, and that’s before we shell out 20% to tuition).
Rent in major cities for a 1 bedroom pushing past 1.5-2k/month, it’s rough, and tuition ranges from 5k-10k/yr (which, afaik, is never waived here)
I joke (half-seriously) that I pay half my income to tuition, and the other two thirds goes to rent. And I’m one of the “lucky” ones that actually got a scholarship for graduate studies…
I’d estimate that half the grad students I know applied and didn’t win any scholarships
Standard operating procedure in school districts around here is austerity, being told how much more is being cut, then proudly announcing yet another new sportsball stadium and/or a new administrative wing to the already bloated building (now with a bowling alley just for administration!) that costs roughly the same amount as what must be cut.
I think software engineering played a significant part in moving the focus away from scientists in the modern era. Before computing scientists were the huge driver of everything, and they held a position of influence in society as a result of that. When computing came around software engineering happened and ever since then almost all “progress” in society has been through the lens of the creation of more and more software infrastructure. Eventually this is to reach a point of general saturation where almost all problems have some sort of software-engineering solution and science is going to be the only pathway forwards again, returning to the past dynamic. Obviously science also didn’t go away during this time but for the capitalists it’s quite obvious that software through techbros has dominated everything for some time now. This blindspot will hurt them more later when they eventually come out of the fog that software dominance has created.
In retrospect, I was probably too generous to the capitalists. Tinder for dogs sounds less destructive and more funny than all of the shitcoins they’re actually investing in.
It’s something I noticed too. Computer science doesn’t seem to have as much “science”, and in STEM. The s and m are much quieter than the T and E. Not to say that engineering isn’t cool as shit even though I never majored in it (right now I’m weighing between CS and bioinformatics). Just that the US is turning itself into a one-trick pony.
Globalisation creates one-trick ponies. The entire world has been moving towards each country specialising into a very very specific thing, whether it’s technology or financial services or w/e.
Personal computing is a big part of this, too, I think. Software engineering is very materially different from “traditional” forms of research because there’s not a huge amount of capital and personnel that’s necessary to do said research
I think it’s probably not dissimilar to like, actual engineering. This too was wildly popular among the capitalists up until it matured to the point where almost all human problems have an engineering solution outside of megaprojects that are too high risk (and longterm) for the capitalists to want to expose themselves.
They pursue short term and low risk with highest gain. Eventually software will run out of this, it will mature to the point that the only available projects are so massive and high risk that they look elsewhere. When this happens new science becomes the highest impact potential again and they start paying attention to it, even elevating it to the forefront of national news because they want to hear more of it so they keep up with the latest thing. Right now they elevate tech to the forefront because it’s their world and they want to hear more about tech to be at the forefront of new things to try and get on that gravy train early. You can trace the difference between the 20s-60s and today back to the computer changing this environment, the bourgeoisie pushed science into the background and brought software engineering to the foreground, it’s not going to be infinite though. They will want science again when it can offer nothing more to them.
Gotta have a way to privatize the gains from publicly funded research without it being too obvious? I have no idea who’d be paying attention at this point though.
Burgerland ideology seems to seriously believe that scientific progress depends on “disruptive innovator” billionaires and not actual fucking scientists. I think that ideology partially drives government (and private corporate) policy, which causes material conditions to worsen enough for actual fucking scientists to leave.
Based on what the people I know in academia/university research have told me, the research landscape I the US/canada is fuuuucked, too. There’s barely any federal/public funding and corporate partnerships where the research is increasingly risk-averse/uncreative are becoming the norm.
In Canada, the typical scholarship that graduate students are expected to fund themselves with haven’t changed in amount for 20 years. It’s been 17.5k/yr for master’s level students, and 20k-35k/yr for PhD students since 2003. In those 20 years, minimum wage has more than doubled in Canada, tuition has more than doubled, rent has tripled or more, faculty wages have doubled, etc… Everything is more expensive, and everyone else is earning more, but we are expected to live on the same 20k/yr as our supervisors did 20 years (which is now well below the Canadian poverty line, and that’s before we shell out 20% to tuition).
Rent in major cities for a 1 bedroom pushing past 1.5-2k/month, it’s rough, and tuition ranges from 5k-10k/yr (which, afaik, is never waived here)
I joke (half-seriously) that I pay half my income to tuition, and the other two thirds goes to rent. And I’m one of the “lucky” ones that actually got a scholarship for graduate studies…
I’d estimate that half the grad students I know applied and didn’t win any scholarships
Standard operating procedure in school districts around here is austerity, being told how much more is being cut, then proudly announcing yet another new sportsball stadium and/or a new administrative wing to the already bloated building (now with a bowling alley just for administration!) that costs roughly the same amount as what must be cut.
I think software engineering played a significant part in moving the focus away from scientists in the modern era. Before computing scientists were the huge driver of everything, and they held a position of influence in society as a result of that. When computing came around software engineering happened and ever since then almost all “progress” in society has been through the lens of the creation of more and more software infrastructure. Eventually this is to reach a point of general saturation where almost all problems have some sort of software-engineering solution and science is going to be the only pathway forwards again, returning to the past dynamic. Obviously science also didn’t go away during this time but for the capitalists it’s quite obvious that software through techbros has dominated everything for some time now. This blindspot will hurt them more later when they eventually come out of the fog that software dominance has created.
Capitalists doing the sweating two red button meme where the buttons are “revolutionary solid state battery” and “tinder for dogs”.
Capitalists would just press the “tinder for dogs button”, nothing to sweat about
In retrospect, I was probably too generous to the capitalists. Tinder for dogs sounds less destructive and more funny than all of the shitcoins they’re actually investing in.
Capitalists don’t like dogs aside from as status symbols.
Tinder for dogs you say…? 🤔
It’s something I noticed too. Computer science doesn’t seem to have as much “science”, and in STEM. The s and m are much quieter than the T and E. Not to say that engineering isn’t cool as shit even though I never majored in it (right now I’m weighing between CS and bioinformatics). Just that the US is turning itself into a one-trick pony.
Globalisation creates one-trick ponies. The entire world has been moving towards each country specialising into a very very specific thing, whether it’s technology or financial services or w/e.
Definitely, but I am surprised that it is happening to even
, a country with 331 million people and spans almost a continent wide.
Personal computing is a big part of this, too, I think. Software engineering is very materially different from “traditional” forms of research because there’s not a huge amount of capital and personnel that’s necessary to do said research
I think it’s probably not dissimilar to like, actual engineering. This too was wildly popular among the capitalists up until it matured to the point where almost all human problems have an engineering solution outside of megaprojects that are too high risk (and longterm) for the capitalists to want to expose themselves.
They pursue short term and low risk with highest gain. Eventually software will run out of this, it will mature to the point that the only available projects are so massive and high risk that they look elsewhere. When this happens new science becomes the highest impact potential again and they start paying attention to it, even elevating it to the forefront of national news because they want to hear more of it so they keep up with the latest thing. Right now they elevate tech to the forefront because it’s their world and they want to hear more about tech to be at the forefront of new things to try and get on that gravy train early. You can trace the difference between the 20s-60s and today back to the computer changing this environment, the bourgeoisie pushed science into the background and brought software engineering to the foreground, it’s not going to be infinite though. They will want science again when it can offer nothing more to them.
Gotta have a way to privatize the gains from publicly funded research without it being too obvious? I have no idea who’d be paying attention at this point though.