Technology Funding in the US

January 27th, 2009 by Julia Lim

Prepared to get peeved at the Washington Post for ignoring our local tech community in favor of Silicon Valley again, I was pleasantly surprised by the article, “Silicon Valley Wants to Stay on the Road to Prosperity“. As much as we might engage in some friendly competition with HP, IBM and Microsoft, the fact remains that we all owe them debts for their contribution to advancing technology and in particular technology education in our country. But as with all things tech, it’s not just a Silicon Valley thing – it’s a Redmond thing, Armonk thing, NYC thing, Austin thing, DC Metro thing, etc.

In 2008, The National Science Foundation (NSF), located right here in Virginia, had $4.5 billion to award for science and engineering grants. The list of grantees is long, but my personal favorite must be $100K actually awarded to Professor Bonnie Nardi of UC Irvine to study World of Warcraft. WoW.

Now, I don’t want to undercut the central message here – instead of bailing out the failing auto industry, the people in the article are talking about putting those billions to work in tech where we’re strong and need to continue to be strong to compete worldwide. $13.4 billion bailout of the failing auto industry versus $4.5 billion for science and engineering grants. And possibly $4 billion more for GM in Feb. On top of the $700 billion bailout for Wall Street. Starts to look like funny money after a while.

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