I remain perpetually perplexed why people who invoke Mansfield's name almost universally shrink from describing why they feel it is relevant to invoke Mansfield's name.
Yes, there was a Mansfield amendment and a would-be 'nother Mansfield amendment. It had some (waves hands) ever-unarticulated effect on defense funding of research. Motivations of Mansfield are never articulated. Seems so self-defeating to not describe.
Going into the specifics of what motivated Mike Mansfield requires going beyond the conversation we're having about R&D into the domain of politics and ideology. I want to stick to relevant realities related to people in technology:
1) This killed research in the United States. This killed the program that paid for Alan Kay and Douglas Engelbart's PhDs. This has led to or is at least heavily correlated with the decline in technology and science innovation that has occurred since the beginning of the neoliberal assault. In 1961 we get SketchPad at the University of Utah. In 1968 we get the Mother Of All Demos. What's been developed since with the same kind of impact? I'd argue, "not a whole lot."
2) This has inevitably led to a decline in the public's enthusiasm for technical innovation. I remember the early 1990's World Wide Web. I remember the feeling that a non-marginally better future was, "months away." Now the government and Google collude to spy on me and my family. Now I have a short-form video feed that is paid to deliver content meant to extremize me as a young adult.
The Mansfield Amendment is the technical glitch that may have cancelled a better future for technologists and especially technology literate young adults. It's difficult to say and we may never know. My feeling is that some day some country might achieve a level of social democracy where-in, "we get back to that." Time will tell. The irony is that it's the Adam Smith Societies pushing the hyper, "privatize everything agenda" that reifies the problem. Adam Smith actually advocated for strong public institutions- especially educational institutions.
Ok, starting to get somewhere, so I thank you for that much. We have the understanding now that there is some discontent with one of Mr Mansfield’s amendments, specifically its perceived outcome on innovative, not-necessarily-defense-oriented-but-still-could-be research funding.
Still unanswered questions:
• Which Mansfield
amendment is wing referred to? Namong the year would be suffiicnetly identifying
• What were Mr. Mansfield’s goals in pushing his eponymous amendment.
And I would like to ask a follow-on, once again in appreciation of your response:
• Among the people (usually academicians in my experience) who express unhappiness with (one of) the Mansfield amendments, why don’t they express at least equal level of unhappiness with the NSF not being allocated a larger budget with mandate to fund the future Engelbarts & Kays? Or why don’t they advocate the standing-up of a National Engineering Foundation, or a peacetime non-weapons version of the OSRD to fund the next Engelbart, as vociferously as they express discontent with Mr. Mansfield’s amendment?
Hey Rick. Excuse me for the long reply time. Our cinema program at our local university has been eating up a lot of my HN time. I appreciate your response in turn.
1) The relevant portions come in 1973. By 1969 we see developments in this direction. I have links but thanks to the Peter Thiel shithead take over of search I'm finding it hard to find the relevant literature on the NSF website. I found this article informative:
2) From what I've been able to gather most of the rationale of restricting research came in response to the Vietnam War. It was misguided but the idea was that the role of ARPA (to become DARPA) should be concentrated strictly on military projects to prevent waste and overspending. As, "lefty that likes psychedelic rock" I get how at the time this might have made sense. Mansfield was Senate majority leader and given the popular anti-war/military sentiment I can see how the, "hippies and beats" might have seen ARPA as a menace. It's worth noting that they didn't have the incredible hindsight at the time that would include seeing the ARPANET evolve into the Internet or Engelbart's project eventually becoming the Macintosh.
As for your last paragraph-- I agree. NSF should have a larger budget. Honestly I don't think that in today's political climate that, "restarting IPTO-ARPA like it was in the 1960s" is actually a good idea. Even the idea of creating a new Xerox PARC was tried by our namesake Y Combinator and from, "what I can gather" the project was a massive failure. Like I said-- we get to a point where discussing what motivates society to fund the education of the Paperts, Kays, Engelbarts, and Brenda Laurels of the world becomes a discussion about ideology. I'm with you for creating a, "NEF" or a peacetime OSRD. Honestly in some sense if critics are right about the United States being in a state of, "cold/pre civil war" this might become necessary. I'm with you in this regard. The issue is motivating the powers that be and those with the capital to realistically fund projects like this to do so. Historically this requires either a period of unprecedented peace or a war. Given the current situation I'm think that the later is more likely. This really pains me as a millennial but as a wise man once said, "we must deal with the world as it is not as we would like it to be."
Thanks for the worthwhile exchange. Wishing you and yours the best this evening ricksunny.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1945/07/as-we-m...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Mansfield
If you know; you know. #ARPA