Personal computing is a big part of this, too, I think. Software engineering is very materially different from “traditional” forms of research because there’s not a huge amount of capital and personnel that’s necessary to do said research
I think it’s probably not dissimilar to like, actual engineering. This too was wildly popular among the capitalists up until it matured to the point where almost all human problems have an engineering solution outside of megaprojects that are too high risk (and longterm) for the capitalists to want to expose themselves.
They pursue short term and low risk with highest gain. Eventually software will run out of this, it will mature to the point that the only available projects are so massive and high risk that they look elsewhere. When this happens new science becomes the highest impact potential again and they start paying attention to it, even elevating it to the forefront of national news because they want to hear more of it so they keep up with the latest thing. Right now they elevate tech to the forefront because it’s their world and they want to hear more about tech to be at the forefront of new things to try and get on that gravy train early. You can trace the difference between the 20s-60s and today back to the computer changing this environment, the bourgeoisie pushed science into the background and brought software engineering to the foreground, it’s not going to be infinite though. They will want science again when it can offer nothing more to them.
Personal computing is a big part of this, too, I think. Software engineering is very materially different from “traditional” forms of research because there’s not a huge amount of capital and personnel that’s necessary to do said research
I think it’s probably not dissimilar to like, actual engineering. This too was wildly popular among the capitalists up until it matured to the point where almost all human problems have an engineering solution outside of megaprojects that are too high risk (and longterm) for the capitalists to want to expose themselves.
They pursue short term and low risk with highest gain. Eventually software will run out of this, it will mature to the point that the only available projects are so massive and high risk that they look elsewhere. When this happens new science becomes the highest impact potential again and they start paying attention to it, even elevating it to the forefront of national news because they want to hear more of it so they keep up with the latest thing. Right now they elevate tech to the forefront because it’s their world and they want to hear more about tech to be at the forefront of new things to try and get on that gravy train early. You can trace the difference between the 20s-60s and today back to the computer changing this environment, the bourgeoisie pushed science into the background and brought software engineering to the foreground, it’s not going to be infinite though. They will want science again when it can offer nothing more to them.