This is a really great question! I can't help but think that for some small multiple of the cost of the International Space Station or Large Hadron Collider or

This is a really great question! I can't help but think that for some small multiple of the cost of the International Space Station or Large Hadron Collider or any other large government science experiment, the nations of the earth could have gotten together early on and funded a free satellite internet project. It would have been limited bandwidth, high latency and error-ridden but it would have been ubiquitous in coverage, much like the GPS system. And would have accelerated adoption of many of the digital cash and e-banking innovations we are seeing today. As well as gotten a jump start on the physical layer of space based internet ;)