It is common for research policy people to get together to talk about how the system that sustains them can be used for economic, human, and their own betterment. The latest such gathering took place early this month at the National Academy of Sciences in a forum titled Harnessing Science and Technology for America's Economic Future. The situation addressed was basically this: R&D budgets may again seem big, growing, and cause for jubilation. But that wasn't at all the case a mere two years ago when research suffered under political stranglehold in Congress. The system recovered, but it remains shaken and wary by the experience. Other uncertainties stem from the new combinations of R&D efforts taking place under the phenomenon called globalization. Manufacturing and service workers, living in fear of the next wave of downsizing, know that the current explosive hightech economy, because it is global, does not lead to job security. And the ever-accelerating, ...