The above is a quote from 1955, from a guy called Alex Lewyt, who was then president of a vacuum cleaner company. Fifty-five years later I still have to plug mine into the mains. It is one of a number of predictions about future technologies that have proven over optimistic. I came across this while I was searching for predictions from the 1950s and 1960s about what technology we would have now. This was inspired by the fact that I am currently writing a grant proposal – a bid to a part of the UK government (called EPSRC) for money to do research. As of late last year the proposal must include a bit where I must say what is the “potential, over 10-50 years, to meet national strategic needs” of the products of the research.

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In British Universities the  all-important Research Excellence Framework (REF) is coming up. It is all important as how well a University does will determine how much money they get from the government. If we are assessed and found to be really good, we should get a bit more money from the government, but if we are found to be not so good, we will get less money which as money is so tight in UK Universities is very bad. Basically, in the future Universities will get most of the money to cover our basic running costs (e.g., my salary) from UK student fees, this REF money which we get to support research, and the fees of overseas students.

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