"look at the speed at which the internet has taken over communications versus the years and legal wrangling necessary for the evolution of telephone. telephone began as something distributed, the market realized that monopoly was required for true universal access, and then that monopoly was counterproductive to its further development. "
"Universal access" was a public policy goal, and had little to do with the market. Universal access was a public policy tool used by incumbents in the telephone and utility industry to create monopolies enforced by public policy enforcers. There was nothing "natural" about "natural monopolies"; just look at the fierce competition between local teleco vs. cable companies today in building competing fast networks. Monopolies were created by government policies. Government itself is the biggest monopoly of them all. If you are truely against monopolies, not sure why you are such a big fan of government. The telephone industry expanded extremely rapidly until the government got involved through licensing the laying of wires and "universal access" mandate. The internet expanded very slowly while managed by the government under APARNET, then grew extremely rapidly when freed of government management; the existing physical telephone network in the 90's helped too.
" ibm's blue gene and computers from tera (formerly cray) are still essential. that doesn't mean that commodity clusters won't eventually win, but they're not a replacement for supercomputers everywhere. otherwise, the gov wouldn't be providing the lifeline to sgi and others to keep them producing the technology that's still needed."
What are you talking about? IBM's blue-whatever and Cray's "super computers" have been using arrays of garden variety commercial microprocessors for a decade and half now. What they are doing is essentially fancy garage shop work that grad students with public funding would indulge themselves in between beerfests. It's not entirely clear the government involvement is beneficial to the industry or to the society, both regarding the taking up of processors, brain power, and the carniverous data mining those government clusters are being used for.
"aids largely affects poor countries in africa."
So taking money from citizens at gun point to research for a disease that primarily affect somewhere else is laudable now? Wow, I'm really impressed by the Sage King.
"if scientist Y hadn't received continued funding for studying rats, the whole chain of events is broken. and without a steady source of funding, why would scientist Y spend his life studying gerbils? sexual gratification? "
Science did not exist before the late 19th century. People didn't even know how to dream, think, or light fire before the big government came along to help them. Private benefectors next existed.
"i contend, on the contrary, that virtually every advance in technology and medicine during the last century has had its start in exactly these places, with perhaps the sole exception being bell labs and xerox parc. "
So which national lab came up with i4004, the very first silicon microprocessor? the most important invention in the last 50 years. Which national lab came up with cisco routers? Which national lab came up with Motronics and dynamic stability control that cleared up the air and save lives from spin-outs? Which national lab came up with RoundUp? Which national lab came up with ATM machine the credit card (on which our economy has been floating for two decades now, LOL).
" i think if you trace back each of these examples of market forces winning out in the end, you'll find that they all begin somewhere with an essential piece that was government funded. "
Sure, the participants all paid taxes too; perhaps you can argue that without time out figuring out their own taxpayments, they'd never have stumbled upon their brilliant ideas. Just because the government was somewhere along the way, doesn't mean it was critical or even beneficial. Like I said before, some state worshippers may argue that Alan Turing would never have thought of his computational theory ideas if not for government funding; on the other hand, for a non-worshipper of the government, it shouldn't be hard to grasp the concept that Alan Turing had his idea even before the government hired him or would have come up with it anyway in private employment, and he probably would have come up with even greater ideas if not for his life being ruined by the government.
"the first time you do something it’s science. the second time it’s engineering. a third time it’s just being a technician."
Then it can be argued that government funding usually misses the scientists, and go straight for the technicians, and bad ones, for a wasteful end. When scientists were working out the math and physics for missiles and space flight, government funding was nowhere to be found because it was too esoteric. Government funding came in droves when it was time to go to the moon, after thousands of missiles had already been fired. The moonshot served no practical purpose whatsoever despite the billions of dollars spent and numerous lives and careers of some of the most brilliant minds in the gene pool wasted (the same minds that might as well have invented the micro computer, internet and cure for cancer earlier if they had not been drafted by the government for the glory project) . . . but the scribes defending the wasteful spending has to come up with something, so plastics it was . . . never mind that plastics was used by Henry Ford in the 1920's cars, long before Warner von Braun fired his first rocket.
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