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Comment by moralestapia | Hacker News Reader

>Government tech investment delivered the Internet

Hmm ... nah. The internet would have happened anyway. Also, we owe its growth to plenty of ISPs everywhere and quite possibly ... piracy and porn.

Even if it was true and the government single handedly created the whole www, that shouldn't be a carte blanche to just waste money that could otherwise be invested in a better way.

Also your bit about YC, YC is private money, they could throw all of it into the ocean and I wouldn't bat an eye. The government, however, takes almost half of what I make, for sure I'd like to know, with unprecedented detail, where and why my money is going to.

You couldn't be more wrong if you tried to, lol.

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> The internet would have happened anyway.

Maybe "mega-AOL" might've happened, but an open network of networks where there's no parasitic mega-corp acting as gatekeeper and tollbooth operator? Citation needed.

The bulletin board networks.

People with two or more computers were always finding ways to connect them before the internet. Networking protocols were a dime a dozen in the 70s and 80s. The idea that people would never hit on the idea of a protocol over telephone wires is not particularly compelling.

It's like saying if the Wrights had not invented controlled, powered flight in 1903 we'd still not have airplanes. (It would probably have been accomplished by other people by 1908 or so, 1910 at the latest.)

The internet was just one step in a long line of digital telecommunications networks, starting with telegraphy. See "The Victorian Internet" by Tom Standage

https://www.amazon.com/Victorian-Internet-Remarkable-Ninetee...

AOL was made far after that and still exploded in popularity. Facebook today is approaching the level of mega AOL.

There is a constant pull between open and closed systems. Nothing the government did ensured networks would be connected together. TCP/IP is such a low level building block it’s easy to create closed networks with it.

Happened anyway? You have any idea of the value that was created by having it happen many years earlier? Modern integrated computers let alone the Internet were brought into being because of defense investment by the government. These things rarely happen entirely organically in free markets. You think SpaceX would exist without heavy early investment by NASA, or later money from the commercial crew program? Unlikely.

>Happened anyway?

Absolutely, zero doubt about it!

>You have any idea of the value that was created by having it happen many years earlier?

There's no early or late, it happened when it happened.

Also www means "world wide web" which, by definition, implies a collaborative effort of the whole ... world? Sure, props to the US for lighting the first spark, but after that everyone did their part, even us, its users.

Yes, an effort of the whole world's public institutions. Tim Berners-Lee didn't work for the CERN Corporation when he set up the Web.

Tim Berners-Lee’s contribution was not novel. Hyperlinking things had many parallel competing implementations.

Had he waited a couple of months we would have essentially the exact same thing with a different name.

TCP/IP and lower level protocols that connected everything together is really the boon. The protocols for how we exchange data on top were inevitable.

TCP/IP and protocols which originated from ARPANET?

There is a looong way from a University Communication protocol to my ISP giving me gigabit connection for 50 bucks a month to connect to Pornhub.

Private sector delivered the Internet. Academia researched and established standards. What the US government did was having the foresight to understand this need and grant research funds and contracts to the sectors able to deliver.

It's not a negligible contribution by any means but it's pretty small in the grand scheme of things.

Yes, tcp/ip was a foundational protocol that came from DoD money. My point is that CERN’s contribution was negligible to the Internet, not that government investment is irrelevant.

Some effort from everybody in the world, even us, its users.

I'd estimate the "GDP" and traffic related to public institutions as a single-digit percentage of the whole web.

Private interest created the use cases and further innovation but public investment, as they say, took the initiative in creating the Internet.

Private interest created the internet you use today.

It’s like saying Pythagoras created all of modern math, including calculus.

No one here is claiming the Internet was created by one single party or another. Taking the initiative in creating something is a different thing from creating all of it.

Piracy is routinely found to be illegal when it meets the judicial system, and the distributors of porn profited greatly from the distribution system before the internet. Why would they be the drivers of this?

edit: replied to the wrong comment, but it's still relevant to the assertion that the internet would have been invented without public funding

Funny how much these invisible hand types rely on unfalsifiable claims to make their point. “Would have happened anyway, 100% positive of this”. Oh for sure dude.

The burden of proof always seems to fall on people who live in reality.

"happened anyway" is always logic I see applied to government made advancements and not to private ones.

A good read on the topic is "The Entrepreneurial State" by M. Mazzucato.

Not always, not the case with me.

Would you say the Google search engine or the iPhone have happened anyway?

Definitely!

Google was just one of many search engines when it was created, arguably the best of its time, but still not the inventors of the search engine.

Same thing with Apple and the iPhone.

Sounds... strange.

> that's not a carte blanche to just waste money that could otherwise be invested in a better way.

What are some of the better ways to approach investment by the government today, compared to what we have?

In-Q-Tel seems to be doing well from the outside. Curious what people think. I’m also confused why the EU pursues broad megaprojects instead of adopting the model that produced their antecedents. Is there some historical reason?

Let the people discover what to invest in themselves.

I'd rather have a panel of experts in the field with clear criteria decide the merit of the grant vs a crowdfunding-like model where people vote for the most charismatic person with the most well-produced video.

What clear criteria do they use to decide the merits of grants?

> the most charismatic person with the most well-produced video.

Ability to actually communicate your idea and justification for being funded, effectively and in a professional manner, is something notably missing from many academic projects. It's not exactly zero signal.

Those “panels of experts” tend to be interested in what they are already trained in. An expert is the last person you want to push for new ideas.

> Let the people discover what to invest in themselves.

and then the people will be asking for faster horses.

Did the government invent automobiles?

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