Advance! Vertically!
Will Brown a the Science of Strategy Blog has an interesting follow-up to our weekend musings on NASA's new interest in Push Prizes and whether the direction they're taking will be enough. Like us, Will has some thoughts on how prize money should be directed, and he even suggests a push prize of his own:
The [Speculist] post...links to an essay by Dr. Jerry Pournelle on the proven advantages of technology prizes and how they relate to our current conflict(s) over energy production resources. We believe that the proven model of human expansion onto new ground must continue for our species to have any chance for long-term survival. Since the opportunity to do so horizontally entails near-guaranteed conflict with the current occupiers of the available ground (which, admittedly, has also been a common aspect of that same historical model), the direction of choice is vertical. Mr. Pournelle’s admonition to make that effort a strictly goal-oriented one seems the most strategically sound advice of which we are aware.
Therefore, we advance the position by suggesting creation of “The Pournelle Prize’s” and draw upon Mr. Pournelle’s suggested endeavors as reasonable starting points. It is our hope to attract the support of those with the financial and professional means to make such a reality. Since strategy teaches that the more wide-spread the support for an undertaking, the greater the resources available to it’s advancement, we further suggest that a (at least semi-) private lottery and/or stock sale would be the best way to go about obtaining the funding for the designated prizes. Probably both.
Intriguing idea. Rather than calling it the Pournelle Prize, maybe we could call it the Starswarm Prize or perhaps the Birth of Fire Prize. I'm afraid that neither the Mote in God's Eye Prize, nor the Lucifer's Hammer Prize, nor the Man-Kzin Wars Prize would would really work. Sadly.
We'll have lots more on the subject of push prizes in an upcoming edition of FastForward Radio.