Money is the loudest voice, every time. And nobody has lost a single dollar because OS or database research is lacking.<p>Even a major revolution in database tech would maybe reduce costs, downtime, or latency by 10% or so, max. Since that sort of expense is never the dominant factor in a company&#x27;s success, it will never be worth serious commercial investment. And as far as academia goes, there <i>is</i> research happening, it&#x27;s just a slog because all the low hanging fruit has been picked and now people are just optimizing. Fields always slow down after the good stuff is discovered.<p>IMO AI is the only pure CS field worth studying right now, that tree has barely been touched at all. The mundane stuff like OS, databases, and languages have been studied to death, and unless an Einstein comes along, there&#x27;s not going to be any serious motion unless the AI nut gets cracked first.