this post was submitted on 08 Sep 2023
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I would go further: the idea that great research comes out of the private sector is a myth perpetuated by self-aggrandizing corporate heads. Even most AI research is the result of decades of academic work on cognitive science coming out of universities. (The big exception is transformer technology coming out of Google.) mRNA vaccines are based on publicly funded university research too. All the tech in smartphones like GPS and wifi comes from publicly funded research. The fact is, science works best when it’s open and publicly accountable, which is why things like peer review exist. Privatized knowledge generation is at a disadvantage compared to everyone openly working together.
The private sector is very good at the consumer facing portion of innovation, like user experience, graphical interfaces, and design. But the core technologies, with rare exception, almost never came out of the Silicon Valley.
I’d go even father - the private sector isn’t even that good at UX/UI or design
Its main benefit is figuring out the minimum viable product and shipping it at low costs compared to the ideal perfect product from public and open design
The private sector is way better at “we won’t spend anymore time at this. It’s good enough, just deliver the product” than the research sector
Open source projects don't excel at it either, it took GNOME 20 years to stop looking frozen since the 90s. KDE is a toggle and checkmark mess.
Only the users know how to cater themselves, AOSP derivatives, UNIX/Linux rice, seasoned designers copylefting/giving away typefaces and assets, orgs advocating and implementing accessibility options in video games, etc, etc.
Open source projects have trouble getting designers to help, or developers that want to implement the designers vision
My point was that even UI/UX research falls into the same categories mentioned by the other poster - most of the research is being done publicly and the private sector is just implementing it and selling it as cheaply as possible, same as the example of GPS