The connection between MIT and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) over the many years has been a powerful one. On Tuesday, Nov. 29, the 2 got here collectively once more to discover the present and future prospects for increasing the U.S. manufacturing business by way of larger funding in advancing know-how. DARPA Director Regina Dugan and Deputy Director Kaigham Gabriel, launched by MIT President Susan Hockfield and Department of Political Science Head Rick Locke, spoke in Bartos Theatre to a big viewers, principally from the MIT group, about previous and present DARPA initiatives which might be advancing our collective scientific information not solely as it applies to protection, however to the every day lifetime of the American individuals.
The presentation revisited the progress of invention from Da Vinci’s flying machines to “Top Gun,” from the easy phone to texting, from the gargantuan mechanical “thinking machines” of the early twentieth century to the latest overwhelming growth of social media. As Dugan and Gabriel each reiterated, the development of know-how all through historical past has been so dramatic and so unpredictable that even when a prophet might have learn the longer term precisely, his imaginative and prescient would sound so implausible and far-fetched as to not even be believed. Dugan highlighted a number of misguided know-how predictions from historical past, one of the crucial amusing of which was Digital Equipment Corp founder Ken Olson’s now notorious declaration in 1977, “There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home.”
Dugan targeted additionally on the significance of a revitalized nationwide manufacturing mentality. Of DARPA’s perspective on know-how growth, she mentioned, “We can’t predict the future, but we can build it.” She pressured that the query was not whether or not manufacturing was important, however moderately how finest we are able to revitalize it.
Both Dugan and Gabriel additionally addressed the budgetary folly of the Department of Defense’s “buy then make” technique. They prompt that with a renewed deal with innovation and dedication to removing inefficiency and waste, that technique might be reversed into a way more sustainable “make then buy” strategy. If present value developments proceed, Dugan mentioned, by 2064 it would require the complete protection price range to buy one airplane, and by 2120 that very same airplane would require the complete American Gross National Product (GNP).
Dugan additionally defined DARPA’s latest initiatives to “Democratize Design,” crowd-sourcing growth plans for tools to harness the “amplifying power” of innovation and competitiveness. A design competition hosted in Phoenix, Ariz., for a new combat support vehicle generated more functional designs in a drastically shorter time span than the traditional DoD contract methods. Similarly, Dugan praised the Tetris-like online game Foldit for providing an environment where hardcore gamers could apply their problem-solving talents to protein-folding, and in so doing overcome challenges that had baffled experienced biochemists for years.
Gabriel closed with a compelling observation, “The 19th century was about manipulating energy, the 20th century was about manipulating information, and the 21st century will be about manipulating matter.” Indeed, DARPA appears to be charging ahead with progressive concepts not solely to resolve the issues of right now, however of tomorrow as properly.
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