The implicit denigration of fundamental research is bizarre considering that’s where nearly all of the modern world came form.

This week, Rice University said that Darpa, the Pentagon’s mad science division, has invested $11 million in this autocomplete programming project, dubbed PLINY, after the ancient Roman author of the first encyclopedia.

DARPA created the internet. Was that mad science? To the clueless at the time, I guess so. The thing is all really creative things will seem absolutely harebrained and useless at their inception.

Humans are very limited in their cognitive scope mostly (I’d guess) due to evolutionary history.

Even Wired is very, very conservative in many areas.

If “mad science” gave us the internet, self-driving cars (also kicked off by DARPA) and so many other cool and useful things, I’ll take “mad science” for $2,000, Alex.