On to what I can do. I've come up with a project that I'm thinking about doing in the medium-term (5-10 years). The first half of the idea is from Heinlein, the book about the telepathic twins (_Double Planet_ maybe?). In this book is an organization called the Long Range Foundation. If you haven't read it, the idea is they are a nonprofit research foundation. Unfortunately, they hit upon a great scientific advancement that made them a lot of money, and so they had to sink all the money into long-term, pure research in order to get ride of it. But the harder they tried to burn their money by doing esoteric research, the more cool things they discovered and the more money they had.

The second half of the idea is "socially responsible venture capital". That is, funding projects not just based on how much money they will make, but what the long-term effects on society are. You know: "Technology divorced from humanity is worse than no technology at all" (what Mudd claims their mission is). Put those two together, and you have a nonprofit institution that exists to fund research with longer time-horizons than short-sighted corporations & governments, provide venture capital, and maybe do some advocacy, towards technological solutions to human problems, paying attention to the LONG TERM CONSEQUENCES of everything it funds. That means that [hopefully] we wouldn't have funded anything having to do with the infernal confusion engine, for example. If the venture capital arm earns a return, the money goes back into the fund, but even if not, it would exist on donations. The charter would specify that a certain %age of funds would have to go towards > 10 years, > 25 years, and > 100 year research (not that I'm sure exactly how you define the time horizon for research, but you get the idea - we fund stuff other people won't touch).

There are "socially responsible mutual funds" and investments that make sure they are putting their money towards non-exploitative activities. But that is at a much higher level, they are not funding specific projects & research, only existing companies. I'm picturing something that is a combination of a futuristic but realistic think tank that identifies human problems and potential solutions (mostly technological) to those problems, and also thinks about the long-term and secondary effects of those solutions. It then funds projects that meet those high standards.

I think this is very doable. First I have to graduate, work in industry for a while, that sort of thing, but eventually...

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