We currently spend less than half on R&D than we did in the postwar years. Worse yet, funding in many areas has neglected basic research in favor of work that has a clear economic benefit. This is shortsighted; we are eating the seed corn of innovation.One example of how it is not possible to foresee the application of research: At first, Einstein's 1915 General Relativity theory was knowledge at it most abstruse. Few understood it. Among its its first implications were black holes and expanding universes.  More than 60 years later,  in 1978 the US first launched a Navstar satellite, the beginning of the Global Positioning System (GPS) now so fundamental to many technologies. Without general relativity, GPS positions would be off by kilometers.

We currently spend less than half on R&D than we did in the postwar years. Worse yet, funding in many areas has neglected basic research in favor of work that has a clear economic benefit. This is shortsighted; we are eating the seed corn of innovation.One example of how it is not possible to foresee the application of research: At first, Einstein's 1915 General Relativity theory was knowledge at it most abstruse. Few understood it. Among its its first implications were black holes and expanding universes.  More than 60 years later,  in 1978 the US first launched a Navstar satellite, the beginning of the Global Positioning System (GPS) now so fundamental to many technologies. Without general relativity, GPS positions would be off by kilometers.

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