Columnists often have a hubris that exceeds one's wildest dreams. One of the more "self enlightened" of the NY Times states:
The problem has been that over the last few decades only a few veins have really been paying off and changing lives. Discoveries in information technology have obviously been massive — the internet and the smartphone. Thanks in part to public investment, clean energy innovation has been fast and plentiful. The price of solar modules has declined by 99.6 percent since 1976.
His claim as regards to public investment, akin to the Obama claim that "you did not build that", shows gross ignorance of the facts.
The event which allowed the explosion of the current information age was the breakup of AT&T in 1981. Judge Greene in a simple act ended the controlling monopoly who was struggling to control all communications in the US. If he had not done so we most likely would not have what we have today, for better or worse. This act unleashed massive "private" investments in many areas of communications. AT&T would have squashed the Internet. The free market and entrepreneurs made it a reality.
The fact is that when the Government gets in the mix it stops any and all innovation. But one must look now at the new monopolists, namely the West Coast mobs who are rebuilding the controlling environment. We see the restructuring of a hand in glove relationship between Washington and the monopolists. So who really needs a new App. Did these folks lend a hand in this pandemic? Hardly.
But what has arisen here is the mass development and implementation of bio technologies that will define the rest of our century. mRNA vaccines are but a first step in the exploding area of immune technology. The West coast monopolists will pale by comparison since the biotechs will bring truly life enhancing and improving results. Instead of a new App we may very well have the means for targeted cancer therapy, targeting malignant cell markers and then using one's immune system to eliminate the malignancies, and doing so on a scale never before see.
Was public investment the driver. In this case it was but it was necessary to survive, as were the developments in WW II. These pundits have a true blind spot, focusing on the past. Biotech is the future, and the positive side of this pandemic is its unleashing.
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