PGP Blogs

March marked the 118th anniversary of the birth of Vannevar Bush. Little known outside of “Big Science” circles, Bush was responsible for the development of the federal scientific research system as we now know it. Bush (no relationship to either President) was responsible for putting in place the system of collaboration between civilian scientists and the military that enabled the development of many of the weapons systems that were directly responsible for the Allied victory in World War II including the proximity fuse, sonar, and the Norden bombsite.

Besides serving as the first Presidential Science Advisor (to Roosevelt), Bush was a classic renaissance man and had enough accomplishments on his resume for ten men including:

• While still in college he invented a vacuum tube upon which his first company was based. The company went on to become Raytheon, one of the largest military contractors still in business.
• At the age of 42 he became dean of MIT’s engineering school
• Established the organization now known as the National Science Foundation
• Invented a precursor to the modern computer when he developed an analog computer capable of solving complex differential equations.
• Proposed one of the very early hypertext systems known as a Memex. While Bush’s Memex was based on rapidly manipulating microfilm images, it is one of the basic concepts upon which the world wide web is now based.
• Was the PhD advisor to Frederick Terman who would later become dean of Stanford’s engineering school and responsible for creating the Silicon Valley as we know it.

I've always been fascinated by Vannevar Bush not only because he was fabulously accomplished, but because he was one of the first to recognize the absolute requirement of private/public collaboration in certain scientific fields. He had the advantage of a calamitous war to assist him in getting the federal government to focus on his ideas and provide him a leadership position from which to implement them.

Bush also well understood the need to fund pure research projects that might not result in immediate economic benefit. In 1945 Bush wrote the following:

"The distinction between applied and pure research is not a hard and fast one...But it is important to emphasize that there is a perverse law governing research: Under the pressure for immediate results, and unless deliberate policies are set up to guard against this, "applied research invariably drives out pure."The moral is clear: It is pure research which deserves and requires special protection and especially assured support."

I’ve always believed that even those of us that earn a living commercializing technology owe it to ourselves and our customers to ensure that we continue to support the efforts of the “pure” researchers who are the pioneers in almost all fields of technology. This belief is the primary reason that last year PGP Corporation announced its support of the Oxford Internet Institute (OII). Will we gain any short term benefit from this investment? Possibly, but that isn’t the reason we partnered with OII. We did it because, like Vannevar Bush, we well recognize the need to balance pure research with applied research and product development. Without this kind of balance we would not, as an industry, have access to the ideas and technologies that will keep confidential information safe five, ten and twenty years from now. I can also assure you that this isn’t the only form our support of pure research into data security will take in the future.

- Phil