Turning Science Fiction Into Reality with Ben Reinhardt

Ben Reinhardt (@Ben_Reinhardt), Research Fellow at the Astera Institute and host of Idea Machines Podcast, joins Erik to discuss:

- Why we don’t have as much science fiction-like technology in the world as we could, and how to turn more of it into reality.

- Why venture capital does a poor job of funding new physical technology and why ten year venture cycles are too short for breakthrough technologies. Ben points out that the transistor took 15 years between the kick-off of the project and the first prototype.

- The article Ben wrote on how a private ARPA, or “PARPA” could help bring more breakthrough technology into the world.

- The unique strength of corporate labs at bringing together academics, engineers, and manufacturing, which gave the world plastics, the transistor, and modern computing.

- Ben’s idea of the rich tithing 10% of their income to technological research.

- How philanthropy would need to change in order to help small researchers experiment on longer-term timescales than they do currently.

- The impacts that PARPA would have if it was successful. Read more about the idea here: https://benjaminreinhardt.com/parpa

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