Why I didn't go into academia but GL convincing other people of the value in that. I am sure there are cultural differences here but where I am, the goal of mos

Why I didn't go into academia but GL convincing other people of the value in that. I am sure there are cultural differences here but where I am, the goal of most people who study CS is: leave me alone while I mess about with X (evidence: the local college was doing speech processing/nlp in the 60s, they actively turned down paid work...unsurprisingly, they got left in the dust, professors are now being encouraged into doing commercial work but, of course, most of it is totally nonviable and is just more messing about with complex nonsense that doesn't work). I think if you look at history this is also evident: the inventions of the late 18th century were a function of necessity, the invention of semis (not just in the US but how Taiwan developed)...this isn't to say academia is pointless but there is just far more going on (I think if you look at some of the East Asian nations that get great academic results, their progress on actual R&D innovation is far less impressive).