did Al Gore really invent the internet?
Among the issues that are discussed in these pages is the proper role of government, and while the direction of the Shiavo discussion is that the Feds should not be involved in personal, life-death decisions, there are other questions about what the Federal government could/should do.
Today's NYT features an article on the "Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency" (or DARPA) and what it's role in the development of the technologly of today has been. And it's a little known fact, but deeply appreciated where it is known, that this "tiny" agency (in Federal Government terms) has had a huge impact on our economy and our lives over the last 40 years.
See below for some comments on the role of the Federal government in the economic health of society.
Doug Smith and I co-authored
Fumbling the Future which was published by Wm Morrow in the mid-80s'. Our story about Xerox's involvment in the development of the personal computer, networking, publishing, and a variety of other 21st century businesses, was in part a story about DARPA and how its investments in basic computer science research in the 60's and 70's became private sector research in the 80's and lead to extraordinary economic activity in the 90's et seq. The NY Times has a great chart from the National Academy of Sciences that summarizes those interconnections.
Click here for a larger image.
I have since worked on the connection between basic science, technology, commercial advantage, the accumulation of wealth and power, and -- at the top of the pyramid -- the political process as it tries to resolve inequities created by this process. It's a view of history that I have documented elsewhere. The problem of the history of DARPA and what happens to it now is a far better example of Federal initiative than even the debate on stem cell research.
But the problem is whether there is room in the current political debate for any federal role. Borrow-and-spend Republicans are not advocates of a thoughtful role for government in building a better society; they are simply theives of the public treasury. I love it that the foolish Republican congressmen from Oklahoma want to dismantle NOAA and all the extraordinary work they are doing on weather research (including tornados) because accu-weather can do as good!
Somtimes this issue gets tagged as "industrial policy" and goes into a box where the argument is limited to whether and how much government spending should be used to "drive" the national economy. I think this limited view misses the real question -- which the Times article hints at.
Given the decisions that we have to make about the environment, about medical research, about using our economic resources today for our future benefit -- is a representative democracy that grew out of the optimism of the age of rationalism really the best way to do that?
Let's take the poll below and see what we think.