Kickstart Science
Apr. 11th, 2013 01:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
talvinhttp://sciencewriters.ca/2013/04/08/squashing-science-how-the-canadian-government-swats-down-local-research/
Science is not immediately profitable. If you can roll it out and make a profit off it, it's not science, it's technology.
And, sometimes Science pisses people off. Climate Change is a good (bad) example of how Science can get the axe because of politics.
I read the above article, and I thought, "Maybe we need to start crowdsourcing science." So I went and looked at Kickstarter.com:
Art
Comics
Dance
Design
Fashion
Film & Video
Food
Games
Music
Photography
Publishing
Technology
Theater
No Science. Movies and books and games and all kinds of stuff can make money by crowdsourcing, but where is the Science?
A meteor exploded over Russia with a force equal to 20 to 30 times the size of the bomb we dropped on Hiroshima. Yet, in 2012, NASA's budget request to find things like this was $20 million. In 2011? It was only $6 million. If everybody in the USA gave a buck, a single dollar, it would be $315 million.
If somebody stood up and said, "Hey! I am asking for a crowdsourced grant to do some research" on any number of subjects, you know, I'd be real tempted to toss in a few bucks.
How do we convince Kickstarter to add Science as a category? I think people would pledge, I truly do.
Science is not immediately profitable. If you can roll it out and make a profit off it, it's not science, it's technology.
And, sometimes Science pisses people off. Climate Change is a good (bad) example of how Science can get the axe because of politics.
I read the above article, and I thought, "Maybe we need to start crowdsourcing science." So I went and looked at Kickstarter.com:
Art
Comics
Dance
Design
Fashion
Film & Video
Food
Games
Music
Photography
Publishing
Technology
Theater
No Science. Movies and books and games and all kinds of stuff can make money by crowdsourcing, but where is the Science?
A meteor exploded over Russia with a force equal to 20 to 30 times the size of the bomb we dropped on Hiroshima. Yet, in 2012, NASA's budget request to find things like this was $20 million. In 2011? It was only $6 million. If everybody in the USA gave a buck, a single dollar, it would be $315 million.
If somebody stood up and said, "Hey! I am asking for a crowdsourced grant to do some research" on any number of subjects, you know, I'd be real tempted to toss in a few bucks.
How do we convince Kickstarter to add Science as a category? I think people would pledge, I truly do.
