Steve Jobs Invented the Computer

Without trying to make this blog too political, one of my pet peeves is the general lack of appreciation for the impact of government investment in research on the technology that we take for granted in our lives. Perhaps this is because much of my career has been spent in jobs that are supported by federal or state funding (via grants, contracts, and/or by virtue of being employed by a state institution). Because of that, I tend to bristle at the suggestion that such institutions are a "waste" of taxpayer money and that "the private sector" is the place where "real" discoveries and innovation happen. I would not surprise me to find people who literally believe that Steve Jobs (or Bill Gates) invented the computer. 

As an occasional C-SPAN junkie, I recall Senator John McCain, in his role as chairman on the Senate Armed Services Committee, make a statement to the effect that cutting edge innovation in Silicon Valley makes things cheaper, so why are government research programs so expensive? In my mind, this is conflating three different things -- basic research, applied research, and commercialization of research.* It is most likely true that non-government entities do a better job of commercializing and mass producing technology, which makes it "cheaper," but by that point, the technology has probably already benefited from decades of research supported by millions (or billions) of dollars of government funding. Not to trivialize the role that companies play in commercialization, but this is kind of like giving the server in the restaurant all of the credit for the meal simply because they carried it from the kitchen to your table, ignoring the fact that someone had to create the recipe, grow and harvest the food, prepare the meal, etc.

The trigger for this post was actually a TED talk that I happened upon a few days ago by Mariana Mazzucato. She is an economist whose research focus is the role of government funding on innovation. The talk is from 2013, and based on one of her many books. (I'll need to check those out.) Though I had never heard of her before nor read any of her work, her presentation is much more eloquent that I could ever be.  

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*To be fair to Senator McCain, the context was cost overruns on weapons programs, which have all sorts of mismatched incentives and unrealistic initial cost estimates, so they probably are more inefficient than they should be. (And because there was insufficient money allocated to research and testing of those cutting edge systems before production.) That said, I think the underlying assumption is that the private sector and the government do the same things, but one can do them much cheaper than the other.  (And since government contracts go to "private sector" companies, that kind of proves my point anyway.)