The biggest upheaval in UK science policy since the 1980s is currently underway, with the creation of a much more direct & explicit link between UK government priorities & £9bn/ yr of R&D funded by the agency UKRI My attempt to explain & set in historical context softmachines.org?p=3252

The biggest upheaval in UK science policy since the 1980s is currently underway, with the creation of a much more direct & explicit link between UK government priorities & £9bn/ yr of R&D funded by the agency UKRI My attempt to explain & set in historical context softmachines.org?p=3252

Excellent background to current UK R&D funding turbulence.

A superb summary. Particularly valuable for comparing the scale of budgets allocated to curiosity-driven research compared to everything else, and therefore judging whether the balance is optimal. I suspect not.

This is very good. I would add the current breakdown in the triple-stream funding model as we shift to buckets is likely to do significant damage to research capability in the short term, even if the overall change is a good one.

The way UK govt funds science is in the midst of a major transition, with creation of a much more direct link between government priorities & UKRI research funding. My attempt to set in context the biggest upheaval in UK science funding policy since the 1980s: softmachines.org?p=3252

Rock-climber Alex Honnold is in the news again, for climbing solo a Taipei skyscraper - an excuse to recycle this old post of mine about the importance of technological innovation in climbing, (contrary to the claims of a well-known economist).

Rock-climber Alex Honnold is in the news again, for climbing solo a Taipei skyscraper - an excuse to recycle this old post of mine about the importance of technological innovation in climbing, (contrary to the claims of a well-known economist).

For followers of the Housing Theory of Everything: Why I don't think all our problems can be ascribed to the 1947 Town & Country Planning Act

As pressure builds on the UK to re-build, re-energise, re-arm and re-industrialise, for an increasingly hostile world, a decades old consensus on science funding is likely to come to an end. Wrote this a few months ago, recent events don't persuade me I was being alarmist. softmachines.org?p=3192

It wasn't high energy prices that caused the historic decline in UK manufacturing: fastest drop happened while energy prices were low and falling, & North Sea oil & gas production at its peak. But energy costs a big problem now & hard choices are needed to hold onto strategic sectors

The decline of UK industry wasn’t caused by high energy prices - largest relative decline in manufacturing occurred between 1995 & 2005, when energy prices were low and falling, & the UK was an energy exporter. But high energy prices are a problem for manufacturing now

This is a great read and contains an early candidate for "Understatement of the Year"

The strongest argument I've yet seen for investing in fusion, from @richardaljones.bsky.social. Not as an energy hail mary, but as a genuine technoscientific challenge softmachines.org?p=3229

STEP is exciting and pro-growth - it needs stuff the UK is very good at (cutting-edge R&D; precision engineering; energy technologies) and stuff policymakers are saying they want to be better at (smart regulation; AI-partnered sci/tech; commercialising technology).

I’m surprised that there isn’t more awareness/support for STEP, the UK project to put fusion power on the grid by 2040, amongst our growth-oriented think tanks & anglofuturists, given its energy abundance goal & potential for building frontier technological capacity

I’m surprised that there isn’t more awareness/support for STEP, the UK project to put fusion power on the grid by 2040, amongst our growth-oriented think tanks & anglofuturists, given its energy abundance goal & potential for building frontier technological capacity

Grim scenes from the North this morning (or is it the East Mids?) Looking across to Mam Tor & Kinder Scout from Sir William Hill, Derbyshire

At a time when many bemoan the UK state's inability to deliver big projects & build state capacity, too few have noticed the launch of a hugely ambitious £0.5bn/year technological project: STEP aims to build a pilot nuclear fusion plant delivering power to the grid by 2040.

At a time when many bemoan the UK state's inability to deliver big projects & build state capacity, too few have noticed the launch of a hugely ambitious £0.5bn/year technological project: STEP aims to build a pilot nuclear fusion plant delivering power to the grid by 2040.

On the barmy belief package that motivates Silicon Valley elites & steers their investments: My review of @adambecker.bsky.social 's book “More Everything Forever: AI Overlords, Space Empires, and Silicon Valley’s Crusade to Control the Fate of Humanity” softmachines.org?p=3226

On the barmy belief package that motivates Silicon Valley elites & steers their investments: My review of @adambecker.bsky.social 's book “More Everything Forever: AI Overlords, Space Empires, and Silicon Valley’s Crusade to Control the Fate of Humanity” softmachines.org?p=3226

The Enduring Appeal of Superintelligence, Superabundance, & Eternal Life. Me on @adambecker.bsky.social's excellent book on the Silicon Valley worldview, "More Everything Forever: AI overlords, space empires, and Silicon Valley's crusade to control the fate of humanity" softmachines.org?p=3226

The Enduring Appeal of Superintelligence, Superabundance, & Eternal Life. Me on @adambecker.bsky.social's excellent book on the Silicon Valley worldview, "More Everything Forever: AI overlords, space empires, and Silicon Valley's crusade to control the fate of humanity" softmachines.org?p=3226

Excellent choice - I very much recommend Dan Breznitz's "Innovation in Real Places", very fresh look at placed-base innovation/industrial policy. Can very useful be read alongside @neillee.bsky.social's "Innovation for the Masses". Dan Wang's Breakneck is brilliant too.

End of year overview of posts on my blog Soft Machines. Featuring -the UK's economic stagnation -why the UK's new nuclear build programme failed -good & bad reasons for growing UK manufacturing -scenarios for the future of AI -Moore's law -university/R&D policy for hard times softmachines.org?p=3218

End of year overview of posts on my blog Soft Machines. Featuring -the UK's economic stagnation -why the UK's new nuclear build programme failed -good & bad reasons for growing UK manufacturing -scenarios for the future of AI -Moore's law -university/R&D policy for hard times softmachines.org?p=3218

Pleased to report that there’s been effective communication between @philipcball.bsky.social’s gnomes and Santa’s elves

How should universities work with combined authorities and business to support inclusive growth in our city-regions? Some reflections on my five years in Greater Manchester, to mark the year of my retirement from the University of Manchester. softmachines.org?p=3213

This by the excellent @jburnmurdoch.ft.com confirms my view that political trends are being driven by the halting of the upward economic conveyor belt - striking charts: www.ft.com/content/30a4... Welcome to the age of zero-sum politics

How should universities work with combined authorities and business to support inclusive growth in our city-regions? Some reflections on my five years in Greater Manchester, to mark the year of my retirement from the University of Manchester. softmachines.org?p=3213

An excellent response from @tomforth.co.uk to the TBI proposal for new R&D institutions outside universities. I agree that it would be better if the UK had more diversity in R&D institutions; Tom brilliantly identifies some blind-spots in the TBI analysis. To pick out a few key points...

An excellent response from @tomforth.co.uk to the TBI proposal for new R&D institutions outside universities. I agree that it would be better if the UK had more diversity in R&D institutions; Tom brilliantly identifies some blind-spots in the TBI analysis. To pick out a few key points...

A blogpost in which I return to a continuing theme: The UK’s continuing economic growth crisis. GDP per person grew by 2.3% a year between 1955 and 2008, when growth slowed down dramatically, never to recover. GDP per person is £16,500 (29%) lower than if pre GFC trend continued

A blogpost in which I return to a continuing theme: The UK’s continuing economic growth crisis. GDP per person grew by 2.3% a year between 1955 and 2008, when growth slowed down dramatically, never to recover. GDP per person is £16,500 (29%) lower than if pre GFC trend continued

Good to see the eschatalogical underpinnings of Silicon Valley belief systems stressed in this piece. Perhaps we should see Joachim of Fiore as the true precursor to Peter Thiel and his like. www.ft.com/content/1258...

Nice @richardaljones.bsky.social look at nuclear overspend/overbudget problems softmachines.org?p=3196 Tl;Dr: your colourful stories of regulatory intransigence are not the whole answer

How will AI change the world of manufacturing? Will the future consist of AGI powered humanoid robots building factories to make more robots, as Sam Altman thinks? Or will AI be driving process & system optimisation in increasingly automated factories?

How will AI change the world of manufacturing? Will the future consist of AGI powered humanoid robots building factories to make more robots, as Sam Altman thinks? Or will AI be driving process & system optimisation in increasingly automated factories?

How will AI change the world of manufacturing? Will the future consist of AGI powered humanoid robots building factories to make more robots, as Sam Altman seems to think? Or will AI be driving process & system optimisation in increasingly automated factories? A blogpost: softmachines.org?p=3203

Should the UK "reindustrialise", as Robert Jenrick says in FT this morning? Manufacturing share of UK economy should be bigger, imo, but important to be clear why - should be about increasing productivity, so for value, not jobs, & to be realistic about UK's place in world softmachines.org?p=3180

Great that the government has accepted recommendations of FIngleton Nuclear Regulatory review. Rationalising and removing unnecessary regulatory roadblocks is just the first stage in getting the expansion of affordable, safe nuclear power we need, though...

"Ownership, Control, National capability: learning lessons from the UK’s nuclear new build debacle" In 2014, the UK planned 18 GW of new nuclear build. A decade on, only 3.2 GW is under construction. What lessons can we learn from this failure? softmachines.org?p=3196

The noise about relations between the OBR and the Treasury obscure a more important issue. Nothing is more important for the future of the UK economy than the prospects for productivity growth, and the OBRs record in predicting productivity over the last decade and a half has been dreadful.

Important FT piece on China's challenge to the US and Europe in creating the world's leading innovation economy: "The focus has built deep advanced manufacturing ecosystems around scaling and integration into the real economy, rather than ‘blue sky’ science..." www.ft.com/content/3ecc...

A blog on innovation, universities and the regions that really, really need them. Written with my very good colleague @jcaustin.bsky.social and published by IPS (International Politics & Society) in Berlin. www.ips-journal.eu/work-and-dig...

A better way of visualising the historic awfulness of our current productivity growth performance. Are we really saying technological progress has come to an end and there's nothing more we can do about it? (Also, please join my campaign against plotting the derivative of noisy data)

It's good that the Office for Budgetary Responsibility has issued a document explaining its productivity prediction downgrade. It could, however, have been much shorter. Along the lines of: "As figure 5.2 shows, the OBR's productivity forecasts have zero credibility & should be ignored."

This post gets to the crux of our difficult economic situation - & this is the crucial plot. Our problem - we didn't invest in the future, & now the future has arrived. Now we need to move from consumption led growth to investment led growth.

Here is @richardaljones.bsky.social basically telling us how it is. I’ve been thinking about this since listening to him say this stuff out loud at the @royalsociety.org on Thursday. softmachines.org?p=3192