Most relevant to this discussion is www and that came out as a side effect of physics research at CERN, so it can hardly be described as an intensional governme

Most relevant to this discussion is www and that came out as a side effect of physics research at CERN, so it can hardly be described as an intensional government funded program. The US government's ARPANET plans prior to www never envisaged letting every Tom Dick and Harry do their banking (or anything) online. Even at the time of the embargo, there was PGP and it worked just fine. The problem was, and is, the close relationship between the bankers (and other monopolists) and the government(s), whereby the public is forced to use what they mandate, rather than the other way round. In a different world, it would not be technically difficult for people to download an open source application a la GPG, generate and keep their own private keys, and the governments, banks, and software monopolists working with it, rather than against it. The banks could look up their customers' public keys to establish secure communications and the big software producers could make it easier to use. All it needs is some goodwill, sadly lacking as it weakens centralised control.