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"However, compare that with what's accomplished with rather less money in the private sector" You got a little confirmation bias on your shirt there. It's easy
by blueben 17y ago
"However, compare that with what's accomplished with rather less money in the private sector"
You got a little confirmation bias on your shirt there. It's easy to look around and find successful private-industry projects that had limited budgets. It's also easy to forget about massive corporate boondoggles that sank millions or billions of dollars and were then shuttered for lack of practical use, lack of profitability, or because of project mismanagement. Generally, nobody notices or cares because the taxpayer didn't lose out.
Though we can never show it, I doubt we would have an internet or GPS satellite system today if that same time and money were spent by private industry rather than DARPA. Private industry is notoriously short-sighted, and have absolutely no interest in the kinds of projects that DARPA (and government in general) can afford to focus on. No "responsible" corporation will drop tens of billions of dollars on R&D for projects like "an open spec global precision navigation system" or "a network where any node can communicate with any other node using standardized open protocols". There isn't any profit motive.
BTW, "a relative few of these military technologies turned out to be really useful" is a gigantic understatement. These technologies spawned billion dollar industries, enabled the creation of thousands of companies and millions of jobs, revolutionized our economy and our information infrastructure, and ignited a cultural revolution. That's more than just "really useful".
As I said, either Shapiro is either short-sighted or maliciously misleading. I'm personally going for maliciously misleading to further his agenda.
- Semiapies 17y ago"massive corporate boondoggles that sank millions or billions of dollars" In the billions? Those are very rare in the private sector and quite common in government. "Though we can never show it" No, you really can't, especially in light of how many private online services existed before the Intranet was fully opened up. "Private industry is notoriously short-sighted, and have absolutely no interest in the kinds of projects that DARPA (and government in general) can afford to focus on." Oddly enough, they manage to accomplish quite a bit of long-term work without throwing tens of billions at any given blue-sky project by one company. "BTW, 'a relative few of these military technologies turned out to be really useful' is a gigantic understatement." No, it is not. Most of DARPA's work has had no civilian application at all. That decades of work after DARPA made the Internet useful and that GPS was opened to civilian use doesn't change that simple fact. "As I said" As I said, myself.