One Billion opportunity

[chris0033547]

What would you do, if you had one billion US Dollars and you could use them on anything you wanted.

Cause:
Create a scientific institution for the development of molecular nanotechnology and the quantum computer. All the research, conducted there, would be constantly released as public domain [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain ] so that anyone could freely access the research and do whatever (s)he wants with it. (Although some restrictions may be necessary. Otherwise someone could take the research, patent it and sell it as his or her own. And then (s)he may be able to demand that the research already on the Internet, which was previously public domain, should be taken down. This scenario, where someone steals the work of others without contributing to science should be prevented. But this is a case for lawyers. Maybe something similar to the GPL license or the CC-license would be necessary instead of release as public domain.)

In any case the institute itself wouldn't directly profit from its research in any way. (Obviously all the people, working for the institute would get paid (high salaries if necessary) but all the research results would be free for anyone around the world to study. Take Grigori Perelman [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grigori_Perelman ] as an example; He released his work for everyone to study and refused to take the money.)

( Personally I wouldn't care about "losing" my money in this manner, because I would be investing this money into all of humanity and its future. Who needs one billion dollars in order to live a good life anyway? A few million dollars or even much less would be certainly many times more than enough for me to have a good life. ;-) )

Description:

The aim would be to cure most (if not all) diseases that plague humanity using medical nanobots.

Reason:

After reading the following article on HIV a while ago

http://www.thelocal.de/20131218/germans-...d-cell-dna

I admit, that I'm inclined to believe that "Big Pharma" (the notion that pharmaceutical companies tend to invest only in treatments and developments that are profitable to them and tend to ignore other paths towards cures for various diseases ) is real. Quote from the article:

"The potential is not being used," he said, claiming that pharmaceutical companies have until now shown little interest in investing in potential cures for Aids.

He and Buchholz said they would be looking for sponsors and public money for their future research.

As an example if a cure for aids would be found, certain pharma-companies would not be able to sell drugs to patients, which only prevent the outbreak of aids without actually curing it. But as long as there is no cure, patients are dependent on these drugs and have to buy them all the time. Patients are basically abused as "permanent money cows" by at least some of these companies. A one-shot cure against hiv, cancer or something else like Omnimed [ http://www.orionsarm.com/eg-article/4e9acddc860e9 ], where one pill is enough, is just not profitable enough for the pharma-industry, who can probably profit much more by turning their patients into life-long customers.

Also look at this article about the exorbitant prices, certain pharma-companies are charging for their drugs:

http://www.thealmagest.com/1000-for-one-...ress/11714

Then there is also this article on Wikipedia about the supercomputer IBM Sequoia [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Sequoia ]. Quote from Wiki:

Sequoia will be used primarily for nuclear weapons simulation, replacing the current Blue Gene/L and ASC Purple supercomputers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

Basically they build this system to simulate the detonation of civilisation destroying weapons. Personally I think that this is a waste of precious computing time(, electricity and infrastructure), which should instead be used entirely for medical purposes to find new cures against diseases, which plague mankind.

In general I think that too much money is wasted on warfare [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full-spectrum_dominance ] and the development of new weapons and not on technologies, which could truely "save the world" like medical nanotech. Of course maybe this last argument for the creation of the above institute is a hollow argument, because of the potential abuse of medical nanotech. After all the nanodisaster and the following dark age is a central turning point in the Orion's Arm setting. Nevertheless I still believe that the benefits resulting from the creation of medical nanotech and the quantum computer far outweigh the dangers. The quantum computer development needs to be accelerated in order to achieve human-level ai and initiate breakthroughs in genetic engineering, chemistry, physics and so on.

In any case I believe that the current system of capitalism cannot be overcome without mature nanotechnology and molecular assemblers. Right now there is no workable alternative to capitalism. I think that only a post-scarcity society (cheap energy provided by fusion reactors; molecular nanoassemblers; all diseases are curable; people can decide for themselves when they want to die (otherwise indefinite lifespan) and so on) would be able to at least have a chance to overcome capitalism.

The above "Institute for Molecular Nanotechnology and Quantum Computation" (IMNQC) would play its (probably small) part in accelerating humanity's development towards a Kardashev type I civilisation.