Follow this link to the article by Fareed Zakaria in Newseek.

I have made a few comments on Huffington Post about this article.

As of this posting, the above comment link will take you to these maunderings of my feverish mind.

I think some people are missing the point.

Of course you cannot predict when specific innovations will occur. You cannot even predict what innovations will be (or they wouldn’t be innovations almost by definition).

However, you can figure out what factors help foster innovation as Fareed Zakaria has tried to spell out in his article.

There are some factors we can control and some we cannot. If we can figure out which ones we have some control over and then try to do something positive about them, we will get farther ahead than if we don’t.

Having government actions in this area decided by a president you’d like to have a beer with instead of someone who actually understands the value of technology and innovation is not the place to start. Having a president who puts political operatives in top science related agencies to rewrite the reports of scientists so that they are more politically palatable is not a good way to start. Deriding scientific study by our media, our citizens, and our political leaders (followers), is not a good way to start.

Cutting research funding to universities because they are bastions of liberalism, is not a good way to start. Tilting the tax structure so you can make billions in finance and only paltry millions in science, technology, and engineering, is not a good way to start.

Any other bright ideas from the peanut gallery?

By the way, how much do you think Sarah Palin knows about science and technology?

How much do you think the creationists and intelligent design people know about science and technology?

How much advantage do startup technology companies have in countries where health care is paid for outside the workplace?

It is all connected, people.