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It's not the government's primary job to fund innovation. What we are seeing is that innovation is unable to sustain itself without government money. You've go
by poet 16y ago
It's not the government's primary job to fund innovation. What we are seeing is that innovation is unable to sustain itself without government money.
You've got this backwards. It is specifically the government's job to fund innovation is currently is commercially untenable. Otherwise, who else would do it? Often times after the government's grant expires, the innovation is still commercially untenable. This makes sense because the research is exclusively targeting projects whose commercial viability is unclear. But other times we get things like the Internet, GPS, etc.
Now we can have a long and interesting discussion about specifies; i.e., whether said research is worth it in the long run, how soon should certain technologies be cut off, etc. But the fact that the government is funding technology that isn't able to sustain itself without government money is not a negative thing; that's exactly what the government is meant to do.
- zaphar 16y agoYou say it' the governments job because no one else would do it. That's more of a wish on your part than a fact though.
- poet 16y agoErm, it's most certainly a fact. Government funded projects produced the Internet, while commercial companies were producing centralized, circuit switched networks. It's self evident that no one else was doing it; every single commercial company in the world at the time was pursuing a drastically different design philosophy (the reason being that circuit switched networks were making money). As an aside, it's not really worth joining the conversation if all you have to offer are one-line platitudes. I'd be interested in some evidence supporting your point of view, but you haven't bothered to provide any whatsoever.
- zaphar 16y agoI was typing it on my mobile phone. Which is not a good enough excuse I know but it's the only excuse I have. Also I wasn't disputing whether Government funding produced the internet. What I disagreed with was the notion that the Internet deserved to be produced and therefore the Government was beholden to fund it. Such a discussion wouldn't be a debate that lent itself to the use of evidence for claims since its primarily a philosophical one.
- borism 16y ago> What I disagreed with was the notion that the Internet deserved to be produced quite pointless argument to have on the Internet
- WalterBright 16y agoCheck out FidoNet http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FidoNet http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FidoNet, a hobbyist produced global decentralized fault tolerant network, controlled by nobody. If the internet never existed, it's quite probable FidoNet would have grown up and fit into the same ecological niche.
- chopsueyar 16y agoFidonet is a network like bittorrent is a network. I think you are getting downvoted because of the hardware/software distinction, or lack thereof.
- WalterBright 16y agoThe internet used to run over the phone lines, too. It's a protocol.
- WalterBright 16y agoI suppose everyone has forgotten about all the privately developed and deployed networks before the internet as we know it - BIX, Prodigy, MCImail, Fidonet, UUCP, Telenet, the BBS systems, etc. To presume that without the ARPAnet there would be no internet is a huge stretch.
- WalterBright 16y agoFor another example, the telegraph and telephone networks in the US were built with private funding. Even the transatlantic cables were private ventures (at enormous cost).
- WalterBright 16y agoI'm curious about all the downvotes with no comments. If the facts are wrong, say so.
- rbanffy 16y agoAccept them and don't worry too much about karma. I am aiming for 6502, but won't be sad if it takes a while...
- CamperBob 16y agoYou might read a bit about the history of the Bell System before lecturing us all about how the telephone network was built and paid for.
- WalterBright 16y agoThere's a lot more to it than AT&T's version. See http://www.cato.org/pubs/journal/cjv14n2-6.html http://www.cato.org/pubs/journal/cjv14n2-6.html I don't see anything in AT&T's link suggesting it was paid for by the government.
- CamperBob 16y ago