A bit of housekeeping: I bulk-added the old Science Better list, thinking Substack would give them a chance to opt-in. If you’re here from that list, I’m sorry for the auto-add. I’m continuing the @scibetter thread here on Substack and wanted to extend an invite. Feel free to unsubscribe if the new research direction doesn’t match your interests.
Josh Greenberg, the author of the amateur tech classic From Betamax to Blockbuster, suggested I package up my research scraps into the occasional post. I liked the idea. Let me know what you think of the format.
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The “Crazy Money” Hypothesis
Occasionally a pot of money will become available to support wild, off-the-beaten-path ideas. These funds can be a result of a new initiative from an inexperienced philanthropist, a windfall to an organization, or a new funding mechanism like Kickstarter’s early days. Crazy money can spur unusual outcomes.
These are finite anomalies — brief moments where everything new is emboldened. Both bad and brilliant projects finally get a chance to sprout and grow.
These pots are not endless, though. The bold philanthropist eventually hires experienced program officers to put a rigorous process in place. The new angel investor gets burned on a bad bet and tightens their pockets. Thousands of Kickstarter backers are left hanging on a flamed-out bust. The party always ends. Sometimes quickly and sometimes slowly. Sometimes quietly and sometimes dramatically.
The flip side is true, too. Once a funding stream proves consistent, the already-established organizations will adapt to try and absorb as much as possible. Like water to the ocean, it’s patterned and predictable.
I don’t know if there is a way around this. For both funders and doers, it seems a constant battle to stay eccentric enough to do something interesting. Groups like DARPA and venture capitalists (the good ones, anyway) talk openly about this natural regression to the mean. Many have tried to put guard rails up to prevent it. The only workable solution for these groups seems to be adding fresh blood; bring in new deciders with smarts, enthusiasm, and not quite enough experience to know better.
The other option is just to start over; spin up a new foundation, start another company, or create a new government agency without all the cultural baggage. This can work, too, but it’s a big administrative burden to get such a simple-seeming outcome.
We need better ways to keep things weird.
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“Most innovation comes from amateurs, who are free to be radical, and from scientists in academia, who are free to follow their curiosity. But then there’s a gap. It’s hard to develop radical ideas into something broadly practical, because commercial money and government money are obliged to be conservative, and academic money is limited to discovery. The best money for pursuing really radical ideas into experimental use comes from individual philanthropists (foundations tend to avoid risk).”
-Stewart Brand, Whole Earth Discipline
I recently went back looking for this quote, which I first read in 2009, and found the amateur bit underlined and starred. I suspect this paragraph may be the origin of this decades-long odyssey of researching and experimenting with amateur technology scenes.
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Venkat Rao, who is ringleading a sort of amateur protocol scene this summer, just wrote about his research management philosophy:
Laissez-faire management, mindful presence, context-sensitivity, and porous boundaries. That’s the current best formula for how you can be both methodologically anarchic and usefully institutionalized at the same time.
We’re in a boom time for new institutional experiments in science and research, which should translate into diverse, new ideas about research management. Rao’s philosophy — and the last point about porosity, in particular — stands out as unique. This is not common practice, but I think he’s on to something.
Either way, the Summer of Protocols is worth keeping an eye on.