* While acknowledging that the administration's heart is in the right place, he pointed out that traditionally, direct investment in technology by governments d

* While acknowledging that the administration's heart is in the right place, he pointed out that traditionally, direct investment in technology by governments doesn't work out well. He said the United State's subsidies on ethanol, France's decision to skip the Internet in favor of the state-sponsored Minitel, and Japan's direct investment in supercomputers as it tried to spend its way out of a recession were examples of poor investments. * I'd be willing to say that VC's aren't really interested in government funded research because it actively competes with them. I've been thinking about the roll of government funded research for a while, and I've been amazed at how much science is advanced by military and government funding. Take the tour at the Computer History Museum. I doubt that computing history would have been the same without massive government funding of Colossus and ENIAC. Where would the internet be without ARPANET? Where would nuclear energy be without the Manhattan project? Where would chemical science be without the huge funding in World War I: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_funding_of_science http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_funding_of_science Would our understanding of technologies like radar and sonar be the same without government funding? Would the semi-conductor industry be the same without government investment at it's inception? Certainly NASA has developed a few good technologies.