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Answering in a wider context: Silicon Valley: https://youtu.be/ZTC_RxWN_xo https://youtu.be/ZTC_RxWN_xo It wasn't planned as such, but the outcome is a result

Answering in a wider context: Silicon Valley: https://youtu.be/ZTC_RxWN_xo https://youtu.be/ZTC_RxWN_xo It wasn't planned as such, but the outcome is a result of unlimited debt-based US government spending in WWII to win the electronics war. Only after creating very fertile soil did private enterprise enter the picture. Also, anything war related, ever, including rockets, airplanes, anything that shoots and explodes, submarines, the Internet,... Part of it is that the public is perfectly willing to have "central planning" and pretty much unlimited tax-based spending for military purposes, but try to do get them to accept the same for civilian purposes... You may also check out the economic history of Japan and South Korea, but also how European countries like the UK rose to power. LOTS of government planning. Then there is the entire exploration of the world, done mostly by governments, and even when it was private entities it was with very heavy government support and involvement. Did you know that Gregor Mendel, the monk who did the experiment with the peas that is seen as the basis for genetics, was not an underemployed monk working on his own, but part of a very organized business-government-church effort to support local industry? I think it was about how to get better wool producing sheep: https://youtu.be/D8m-ZEr9qV8?t=276 https://youtu.be/D8m-ZEr9qV8?t=276 (MIT Prof. Eric S. Lander) The "market" is not magic that does everything. It only works well under specific circumstances - and those are exactly the scenarios the books will pick. Read (economist) authors like Ha-Joon Chang (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ha-Joon_Chang https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ha-Joon_Chang).

ghaff 9y ago
>You may also check out the economic history of Japan and South Korea, but also how European countries like the UK rose to power. LOTS of government planning. Yes, although in the case of Japan (MITI and the like), there are counterexamples like the Fifth Generation project. In addition, there were economists like Lester Thurow in the US arguing strongly at the time that the US had to follow Japan's lead in industrial planning to create cosortia like SEMATECH, which largely didn't pan out.
- vram22 9y ago
  >Fifth Generation project Does anyone know what eventually happened to it? I had read about it a bit in the media at the time, it seemed like an ambitious project. I remember they were going to use Prolog instead of Lisp (for whatever reason). Did any concrete benefits come out of the research, for example, that are widely applied in (any) industry? Interesting to know.
  - ghaff 9y ago
    Based on what I remember, the Wikipedia article seems to be a pretty good writeup.[1] The bottom line seems to be that these sorts of efforts are usually not complete wastes in the sense that they bring a lot of smart people into the field. But it's hard to point to much that came directly out of this project that had much of an impact. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifth_generation_computer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifth_generation_computer
    - vram22 9y ago
      Thanks, will check it out.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]

ghaff 9y ago

>You may also check out the economic history of Japan and South Korea, but also how European countries like the UK rose to power. LOTS of government planning. Yes, although in the case of Japan (MITI and the like), there are counterexamples like the Fifth Generation project. In addition, there were economists like Lester Thurow in the US arguing strongly at the time that the US had to follow Japan's lead in industrial planning to create cosortia like SEMATECH, which largely didn't pan out.

vram22 9y ago
>Fifth Generation project Does anyone know what eventually happened to it? I had read about it a bit in the media at the time, it seemed like an ambitious project. I remember they were going to use Prolog instead of Lisp (for whatever reason). Did any concrete benefits come out of the research, for example, that are widely applied in (any) industry? Interesting to know.
- ghaff 9y ago
  Based on what I remember, the Wikipedia article seems to be a pretty good writeup.[1] The bottom line seems to be that these sorts of efforts are usually not complete wastes in the sense that they bring a lot of smart people into the field. But it's hard to point to much that came directly out of this project that had much of an impact. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifth_generation_computer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifth_generation_computer
  - vram22 9y ago
    Thanks, will check it out.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]