Just working on my editing skills. Rough, but improving. Take and look and tell me what you think:

Inspired by Oliver Willi
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It is entirely different to say that “without the government… [I noticed that you have added the qualifier 'and NGO's'] there would have been no Internet…”

We’ll just have to disagree.

Another example: The FCC requirement that AM radio stations stop simulcasting their AM progamming on their FM frequencies was not intended to give us Progressive — “Free” — format music radio, and AM talk radio.
That is just the way it turned out.

Oh, yeah, you really haven’t discussed the issues, have you? My apologies.

BTW, just for the record, I gave a very tepid endorsement to naming SSN 23 after Jimmy Carter. As a principle, I oppose naming warships after living people, and after politicians in general (yes, I am not thrilled about the Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush, and think we have many finer names of honored aircraft carriers we could re-use, such as Lexington and Langley). But Carter, while an inept failure as President, did serve the nation honorably in uniform and did NOT leave the office in shame (as Nixon and Clinton did, in my opinion) and as such it’s OK that he have a warship named after him. And as he had served on submarines, a sub is a bit more fitting than an aircraft carrier.

BTW, Bush ‘41 had a distinguished career as a navy bomber pilot during World War II, assigned to the USS San Jacinto, CVL-30, the last of the Independence-class light aircraft carriers, and as such is probably the most worthy former President to have an aircraft carrier named after him — but I STILL don’t like naming warships after people while they’re still living. One of my favorite authors, James Cobb, writes a series of technothrillers featuring the commander of the first “stealth destroyer” — the USS Cunningham, nicknamed “The Duke.” I sincerely doubt there will be too many more in THAT series, dammit.

J.

I’m not against private entrepeneurship, but you’re wrong – almost all of the inventions you list had a government hand in them – either through the government licensing spectrum, providing the fundamentals of the research (for instance, code-breaking computers during WWII that were in the direct lineage of the PC).

Servers at ARPANet and CERN are still around today using the open technologies made to create the Internet. Prodigy (which I used) and Compuserve as the were originally envisioned are dead because as I pointed out they were built by corporations with the monopolist mindset of keeping up a walled garden. AOL did well, but really took off when it opened up itself to that evil non-profit/government world of the Internet.

JayTea: See how much better it is when you argue the issue (I still probably disagree with you, but its a better argument) than throwing around stuff about Chappaquiddick when we’re discussing energy?

Put it this way: Which was “more instrumental” in the development of the InterNet: The fact that working for DARPA or ARPANet, or CERN, afforded men with with foresight the opportunity to develop the basic building blocks of the ‘Net and the WWW, or the fierce competition between NetScape and Microsoft, which resulted in far more user – friendly access to Web and the ‘Net than Mosaic ever did?

Further, think about CompuServe and Prodigy — were they government organizations?

The general order of technological development is, and probably will always be: private industry / civilians first; government next.
Think of some of the popular innovations of our time, and think about who kicked them off, and then, who stuck themselves on like a leech:
Radio
Television
The PC
The CD

http://tinyurl.com/h7rey

Oliver, show a little respect for historical context. Three Mile Island was in March of 1979. About a year later, Ted Kennedy made his abortive run for president. When I say I remember seeing those bumper stickers, I mean that most literally. I was 12 at the time, and already interested in politics. I remember arguing FOR Carter in 1976, and AGAINST him in 1980, after seeing the utter disaster as president he was.

And as I said, nuclear power in the United States has a safety record that puts any and all other forms of energy production to shame. Add in the advances in technology since we last built a commercial reactor, and there is absolutely no sane reason to not build new plants — especially if we standardize the design, and not make every single one a one-off, unique design, like we did then. For example, the US only built a single plant on the same model as Chernobyl, and it was shut down ages ago.

J.

Neither of these things was done at the behest of a private corporation’s drive to hit its quarterly numbers. They were done under government and nonprofit research and now are in the direct lineage of the greatest communications medium ever. Because the people behind them didn’t say “create the Internet” you think this somehow disqualifies them? That’s quite stupid.

And I could just as easily point to other government iniatives that ended up benefitting us all that did have an end point in mile (Apollo, Manhattan Project to make two that should be easy to look up even for you).

Using your model President Roosevelt would have sat around hoping one of the megacorps would come up with an atomic bomb.

What I asked was, “What has the government done, on purpose, to expand the Internet?”

ARPANet was not created to enhance the Internet. That just happened to be the place where it took place.

And CERN did not have, as one its goals, the improvement of the Internet.

And the place where Einstein ate his lunch while working at the Patent Office, played no part in producing the Theory of Relativity.

JayTea: I don’t live in the apparent fantasyland you live in where the political can be separate from the policy. And for someone like yourself who went as far as Chappaquiddick in discussing nuclear energy, its pretty damn funny for you to say politics is all I know.

I made a passing shot at your partisanship, then brought up a scad of technical issues. You focused, laserlike, on the partisanship issue and made that the whole point of your answer. And you made politics the whole focus of the argument, tossing aside your own ideas and issues in the quest to score points. Because, in the end, politics is all you know, all you care about, all you think about, all you live for.

Which is what I said would happen, writ small, if this became a partisan issue on the national stage.

Thanks for saving me the effort of a lengthy response, and once again reaffirming my opinion of you.

J.

A climate of pure research surrounded the entire history of the ARPANET. The Advanced Research Projects Agency was formed with an emphasis towards research, and thus was not oriented only to a military product. The formation of this agency was part of the U.S. reaction to the then Soviet Union’s launch of Sputnik in 1957. (ARPA draft, III-6). ARPA was assigned to research how to utilize their investment in computers via Command and Control Research (CCR). Dr. J.C.R. Licklider was chosen to head this effort. Licklider came to ARPA from Bolt, Beranek and Newman, (BBN) in Cambridge, MA in October 1962. (ARPA draft, III-6)
http://www2.dei.isep.ipp.pt/docs/arpa–1.html

In 1989, Berners-Lee submitted a proposal at CERN to develop an information system that would create a web of information. Initially, his proposal received no reply, but he began working on his idea anyway. In 1990, he wrote the Hypertext Transfer Protocol
http://www.ibiblio.org/pioneers/lee.html

What are YOUR bi-partisan or non-partisan credentials?
You’re the one who made the claim that my partisanship should summarily cause my idea to be disregarded. I make no excuses for my partisanship, and I don’t hide under the label of “independent” as so many Republican bloggers do. I’m a Democrat, through and through. I’ve voted Democratic in every presidential (Clinton, Gore, Kerry) and gubernatorial election (FL, MA) I’ve ever voted in. I voted for one Republican and that was Steve Cooley for District Attorney for LA.

The only time nuclear power has killed is when it was run by a massive, totalitarian state.
The problem is it only takes one boo-boo for a mass casualty event. I don’t think you’re seriously saying only the Soviet Union has ever had an accident at a public utility, are you? (I do find your Chappaquiddick obsession entertaining, do you just randomly bust out with it no matter what you’re talking about?)

not even Jimmy Carter could screw one up
Not all of us get submarines named after us.

No Republican had anything to do with the  Alphabet soup created by FDR&
Thank God, it saved the nation. FDR demonstrated genuine leadership and the sort of forward looking strategy I’m advocating now, especially when America was going through Nazi-friendly Hoover’s Depression.

you ve read that  Ma Bell may be centralizing and reconsolidating again to better coordinate with new technology
The AT&T monopoly was bad in its first incarnation and while it may not be as powerful in its second go-round, its clear evidence of what havoc unregulated markets can wreak on consumers. If we listened to you we’d have Standard Oil and JP Morgan redux.

Most businesses are only interested in the next quarter (although Google’s rejection of the “beat the estimate” mindset is refreshing), which is just bad business and poor public policy. Any good government looks down the road for its citizens so that we can all prosper in the long run. A government thats all about loading up the pockets of a few while the getting is good is a waste (like our current government).

(You see Frank, that’s called replying in 1 entry and not 300)

What kept us going in the 80’s and 90’s and early 2000’s were the discoveries in Alaska and the North Sea. Since then there have been no new discoveries of what are referred to as elephant fields.

Each year our new discoveries amount to about 1/4th of what we consume. Most of the planet has been explored, and there’s not much oil left. Maybe with technology we can drill deeper.

I have to agree with Oliver. Now is the time to be ahead of the curve. This is a problem only the government — you know, the ones we pay to look out for our interests — should be solving.