Keith Nagel wrote:
>I have nothing against capitalism. But cold fusion is still at the >fundamental research level, and there is no way a venture capitalist can >invest in it.
True, but for the reason I state: there is no property protection so no sane businessperson would invest in it.
You refer to the patent problem. I think that once a fundamental breakthrough has been made, and CF starts become practical, that will be plenty of opportunities to develop intellectual property and patents. The basic process will never be patentable, because of the fiasco over the last 16 years. But for that matter no one could ever patent combustion, and the ICE was invented 125 years ago, yet even today many ICE patents are granted.
Here's a good example of both the positive and the negative of VC funding. The personal computer. The 80's brought the PC into the home, through business and VC.
That is true, and it was one of the most brilliant VC financed technologies of the 20th century. However, personal computers were only a minor incremental breakthrough. The first commercially successful one, the Apple, was developed by Wozniak when he was in his early 20s, working in a garage with off-the-shelf parts. Wozniak is a brilliant engineer, but you cannot compare him to the people who invented transistors, integrated circuits, or the laser.
The fact that personal computers were incremental has no bearing on their overall importance. Sometimes, minor incremental inventions are more successful than radical new discoveries based on new physics. In a few years, wind turbines will probably be generating more electricity than uranium fission reactors. Wind turbines are based on ancient windmills and modern airfoils. They are simple and cheap, and they would be understood by any engineer from the last 4000 years (except for the electric generator part). Uranium fission is one of the most complex and high-tech discoveries ever, but it has been overshadowed by the simpler older technology for various political and technical reasons.
That said, the best that could be done to network them is the venerable BBS, which I'm sure many of us remember. It took the government to create the Internet, and the second great wave of PC's into the home. It is the one example I could think of which arguably reverses your proposed trend. Although I suppose you'll reply that the microchip was essential to make the PC possible, and hence back to the government.
Actually, TI invented the IC, and the microprocessor was invented by a corporation without help from the government. I am not arguing that all important discoveries were made by the government or with government help. That would be ridiculous. There were hundreds of thousands of important discoveries made during the 20th century, and only a tiny fraction of them involved the government. What I am saying is that a certain class of discoveries requires government supports because they must begin with basic research in physics, chemistry or biology. Such research seldom yields intellectual property, for two reasons:
First, as I said yesterday, you cannot patent a force of nature. Hans Bethe had no way to cash in on his discovery of nuclear fusion in the Sun. It seems unlikely to me that Ohmori or Savvatimova could ever benefit from discovering that plasma glow discharge with tungsten cathodes can produce excess energy. This discovery is very different from the original cold fusion. It is probably different enough to allow a patent even though the electrochemical CF technique has become embroiled in hopeless battles with the patent office. But glow discharge looks to me like basic physics rather than something you can take to the patent office.
Second, basic research can only be done in an open academic style in which all information is freely shared. This precludes patenting and intellectual property. If researchers start to worry too much about patents, all the remaining progress in CF will ground to a halt.
As Savvatimova learns more about glow discharge, she publishes her results immediately, in full, in public. (To be exact *I* will publish her results at LENR-CANR.org, just as soon as she in a few other experts clear up the remaining questions I have about the paper, which I am editing.) This is the only way glow discharge cold fusion will ever succeed. Trying to develop it secretly in a corporation would be a disastrous mistake. But of course publishing it on LENR-CANR.org makes it impossible for her to get a patent later on.
- Jed
