Future AIMS of Large Scale Research

Abstract

MANY OF US involved in administration of big scientific enterprises are occasionally overwhelmed by the technological singularity we are experiencing. Physical science everywhere gets bigger and bigger; its successes catalyze each other. The domination of our everyday life by science is almost completed; in return, our Government, our corporations, and our people bestow research support on an unprecedented scale. Not only does our science grow, but the organizational units in which our science is performed are now characteristically huge. Much of our technology and even basic physical science is being done in tremendous research institutions—institutions which almost always increase in size. The huge research institutions—like Mellon or National Bureau of Standards or the atomic energy laboratories or the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics laboratories—are certainly new inventions. The oldest in our country, NBS, was founded in 1901. The tremendous growth we see in them now is almost directly tra...