Comments on: Cleantech's Real Dirty Secret: It's Not Computing

By: eMeter – eMeter in the Press 2009

eMeter – eMeter in the Press 2009 — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 03:37:29 +0000

[...] Earth2Tech, Katie Fehrenbacher, October 9, 2009. “Cleantech’s Real Dirty Secret: It’s Not Computing.” [...]

By: Joe

Joe — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 18:30:54 +0000

I think there is a middle ground between Katie and Max's comments. It is true that the Darpa funding successfully sprinkled fundamental research money across many universities. This created a number of the computing technologies, and maybe more important, Darpanet, the beginning of the Internet. This government approach worked fairly well because those technologies eventually worked their way out of the universities and into the private sector.

However, I side with Max when I think back to the money the federal government handed out to energy companies during the 70's energy crisis. That was a huge debacle and did not provide any long-term benefits.

I do believe that the US needs to invest in fundamental technology in order to sustain long-term competitiveness. We are seeing other countries (esp. China) invest in technology (as well as infrastructure and manufacturing) and it could very well work put them on top of us on the value pyramid. The question is how to do it smartly, so it provides a long-term, sustainable advantage, not a short term stimulus. Joe

By: Max

Max — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 18:27:22 +0000

I've never heard a VC say that the one thing they need as an investor is more involvement in technology development from the government. That's...unbelievable. Most VCs stay away from government interaction. If nothing else, it complicates the IP position that can be claimed by the research. Why would they advocate for a public-development of technology? Very strange....