Website Review: BRAIN Initiative

www.whitehouse.gov/infographics/brain-initiative
www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2013/04/02/brain-initiative-challenges-researchers-unlock-mysteries-human-mind

Reviewed by
Ubiquitous Iconoclast
ubiq_icon@hotmail.com

In much the same way that the proverbial broken clock is correct for one brief moment every twelve hours, the ObaMornic White House might, however unwittingly, finally have hit upon a noteworthy idea with their so-called “BRAIN Initiative” (the first word of which is an all-too-typically cute acronym for “Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies”). Do not hold your breath for that “other brief moment” as the operational clock continues ticking away on this lamest of lame-duck administrations.

Disregard the obscene obsequiousness of staff sycophants dubbing the president “Scientist-in-Chief” at his 2 April 2013 photo-op. The purpose of the initiative is to map all functions of the human brain in the most comprehensive way possible on the smallest (neurotechnological) level to cure or, wherever possible, prevent everything from such debilitating diseases as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, epilepsy and migraines to less serious (in terms of suffering) conditions from dyslexia to stuttering.

Also worthy of ignoring are such bloated claims by the president of ROI as, “From 1988-2003, the Federal Government invested $3.8 billion in the Human Genome Project, which has since generated an economic output of $796 billion – a return of $141 for every $1 invested.”

How, exactly, the so-called “economic output” is calculated, much less the contention that the figure is a “return” is as questionable as all other data put out to sell the viability of cost savings trotted out for such silliness as ObamaCare and a seemingly endless host of other failures hyped as successes. Even if one could take the claim of “generated economic output” at face value, what percentage of that output is productive?

Put more simply, if the $796 billion (to date? annually?) figure is merely money now being spent in the private sector (say by the biotech companies), how much profit is being generated? If (best case scenario) that $796 billion is the taxes collected on profits to date (thus a “return” to federal coffers) how much more could go into life-saving opportunities (perhaps even this BRAIN Initiative) in the form of reinvestment were the regressive burdens of kleptocratic taxation lifted?

The obvious ambiguities of such toss-off lines are a distraction from larger issues involved that merit closer examination. Despite the dubious record of attempts at “picking winners” (Solyndra, A123 Systems, et al.) and the infestation by bureaucratic barnacles, the scope of the endeavor and time required for development of anything fruitful will span several more administrations and congresses so that mere happenstance might serendipitously result in worthwhile output over the course of the next few decades.

Certainly a great enough diversity of expertise has been amassed with funding throughout the traditional hodge-podge of entities disbursed between government, academia and the commercial sectors. Francis Collins, Director of the National Institutes of Health, and Arati Prabhakar, Director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Administration (DARPA) are amongst the leaders of this effort.

Inclusion of DARPA (initial BRAIN Initiative start-up funding of $50 million) is interesting in that the agency was founded in response to the surprise Sputnik launch in 1958 and most famous, as noted on their home page, for having “fathered the Internet somewhere along the way … “1

Hmm.

Yes, what became most of what people today consider the Internet (web, e-mail) was developed by “disciples” of the late Stanford Professor Douglas Engelbart who conceived of the mouse, the graphical user interface (GUI) replete with pull-down menus and so on and, again yes, they put in time at DARPA.

One must note, however, that the early DARPA-net never went too far in those days before most of these pioneers went on to Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) where the mouse was developed (and the GUI, Ethernet, fonts, etc.) but, of course, the potential value of even those things was never appreciated by the corporate brass at Xerox (or, in Xeroid-speak, the “copier heads”) who pulled the financial plug on the research in progress prompting the formation of the companies that became the early Silicon Valley (as well as Microsoft).

How much of what is ever developed as a result of the BRAIN Initiative will have an ROI formula that can be quantified to assess its success? At NIH, a working group co-chaired by Cornelia “Cori” Bargmann of The Rockefeller University and William Newsome of Stanford University, anticipate defining the goals and developing a multi-year plan to achieve them with cost estimates by late August or early September of this year. The duo appeared on the syndicated PBS talk-show Charlie Rose on 15 July 2013 in Episode 14 of the “Brain Series II,” with Dr. Eric Kandel as co-moderator along with panelists Thomas Insel (NIMH) and Story Landis, Director of the National Institute for Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS).2 Speculation as to the potential breakthroughs that might come from the initiative over the course of the next three to five decades include a wide range spanning possible cures to prevention of neurological disorders to the (more Kurzweilian reinstantiating for transfer to non-biological media?) mapping of all thought processes subsuming the creativity that would theoretically enable continuation of the work of Plato, Shakespeare, Bach, Michelangelo or Feynman to cite but a few examples.

A further cautionary note might illuminate as to the matter of expertise. The tale of DARPA/PARC is far more the rule than the exception in terms of forecasting what form, when or where “lightning” will strike. The reality will probably bear no more resemblance to any speculation possible at this time than that of the early DARPA efforts did to today’s Internet. Indeed, a generation ago, Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM in 1943 was said to have predicted “a world market for maybe five computers.”

The “moral of the fable” (if indeed there is any) might be that nobody in the Eisenhower administration or Congress, overseeing those earliest activities of DARPA, could ever dream that the greatest “winners” in terms of what would emerge from the work begun in 1958 would be a pair of college drop-outs (Steve Jobs and Bill Gates), a generation hence, rather than any of the PhD researchers being funded to develop the means of future innovation. Some things probably never change. Even if that eventuality plays out with the BRAIN Initiative however far down the road, the decision to embark upon the journey is still worth the (comparatively) minimal expenditure.

Perhaps, then, the matter of perspicacity in placing bets boils down to Newton’s oft-quoted adage about standing upon the shoulders of giants and explains how the opening sentence of this review squares with the litany of caveats enumerated thereafter. Joseph C. Wilson, coiner of the word “Xerox,” used to posit, “People all too often tend to overestimate what can be accomplished in the short term and, just as often, tend to underestimate what can be accomplished in the long term.”

1 www.darpa.mil 2 nyspi.org/news/charlie-rose-brain-series-ii-episode-14-wdr-eric-kandel . The panelists, especially in the event they ever reconvene or any of them ever intends to opine in public, would be well-advised to see the posting concerning the insidious, invidious and infectious “initial-so” posted at http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=2570 .  5 Ibid 6 Cope, David Virtual Music: Computer Synthesis of Musical Style (Cambridge, MA, MIT Press, 2004) See also, Cope, David, “Facing the Music: Perspectives on Machine-Composed Music” Leonardo Music Journal – Vol. 9, 1999, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA – pp 79-87  ,  7 Hofstadter, Douglas R. Le Ton beau de Marot: In Praise of the Music of Language (New York, NY, Basic Books, 1997) p. xxiv. See also, leonardo.info/reviews/pre2000/kadeton.html and leonardo.info/reviews/sept2007/i_kade.html. In connection with that last reference, a giant mea culpa is in order where misattribution was made with the quote “Puccini being the Wagner of music.” Credit was erroneously given to C. S. Forester when, of course, it should have been E. M. Forster. All those things (human error) that justify Mark Twain’s bon mot about man “being the only creature that blushes or needs to” are the very traits that, however fortuitously if the opportunity presents itself, lead to the break-through “Eureka!” moments making it all worthwhile. 8 http://www.smuinballet.org