One key point made by Dr. Ray Perryman, a Texas economist, during last week's presentation at the Board of Commerce & Industry's annual meeting was this:
   The United States' great strength in the past has been that it is a nation filled with creative, innovative people who are pacesetters for the world.
   And those people seem to be on hold, one result of which is the mild recession we find ourselves in all across the country.
   Let's examine what's going on here a little more closely.
   The fact is that research and development in industry and in our universities and in government agencies is critical to the continued growth of the country and its economy. It is the engine that drives the technological and industrial improvements that make us the envy of the rest of the world.
   And the other fact is that when the economy hits a speed bump, businesses and industries that invest the most in R&D want to cut back, as do universities because funds tend to shrink.
   The picture right now, though, is a mixed bag, according to a survey of 150 top public companies conducted by MIT's Technology Review magazine staff.
   "Spending levels at some of the world's largest research-oriented organizations, including Microsoft and Siemens, (has) continued to rise," the report published in the latest issue shows. "But at a number of other companies - particularly those within the economically troubled telecommunications and semiconductor sectors - spending shrank."
   Having said that, the report goes on to cite a number of companies that are forging right ahead regardless of what the economists say to pursue technologies that will help define our future. (Several, interestingly enough, are exploring ways to use breakthroughs in nanotechnology to create new products, something Texas ought especially to be watching, as Ross Perot Jr. advised us last fall in another BCI setting.)
   Clearly, they believe they can make money in the future pursuing those dreams, and they have bankers and backers who believe likewise.
   On the other hand, the most basic kind research seems to be in trouble.
   In the November issue of Physics Today, Joseph Lykken, a physicist at the Enrico Fermi Institute and the University of Chicago, asks the question: "Is it fair to assert that physics is in crisis?"
   He approaches the answer from a number of angles, but acknowledges at the outset that there is, in fact, a crisis in funding: "Many years of flat research budgets and even flat-flat (that is, constant dollar) budgets, have slowed and discouraged the new initiatives that constitute the future of U.S. physics."
   It is that crisis about which the makers of public-policy ought to be concerned because physics research is fundamental to so many fields and because the research is so expensive that government must very often be involved.
   "Another decade of stagnant or declining funding would eliminate any pretense of the U.S. as a world leader in physics research," he writes. "That loss would be a terrible outcome both for physics and for the long-term prosperity and security of the U.S."
   That many companies and industries are pursuing R&D is good news for the nation's economy in the long run. It means that stagnation is not likely and recovery is going to arrive sooner than later.
   That physics is in funding trouble is bad news. We may not see it pay off for years and years, but history shows that it will pay off.
  
  
  

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