GOVERNMENT'S ROLE IN THE FUTURE 

History has shown that much of the progress  made in past centuries is due to  government and industry having worked together to achieve progress.

A few examples are:

1. The transcontinental railroad was a cooperative effort among private railroad companies and the United States Government in a program initiated by the Lincoln administration.

2  The Panama Canal was a project build by the United States with supplies and parts -such as the huge lock gates- manufactured by private industry.

3.  The moon landings and NASA's continued space effort have involved thousands of large and small private companies in the development and implementation of state-of-the-art technologies.

4. The interstate highway system was first proposed by the FDR administration and implemented by the Eisenhower administration.

5. Much of electronic communications technologies came from military programs and US space programs.  The government developed the first communications satellites (Telstar) in the 1960s.

6. Modern transportation has been developed jointly by government and industry on occasion.  Boeing Aircraft was able to dominate the early days of jet aircraft production because they used an aircraft developed for the military (the KC135) and converted it into a passenger airplane--the 707.

7.  The Internet began in late 1960s as a Defense Department network called DARPA Net (DARPA was the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency). 

8.  Computer components including the mouse, windows and others were developed by the  Computer Science Laboratory and Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) that were heavily subsidized by government.  Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and others took these already developed technologies and produced them for worldwide use.

Even though large government has not been very popular in recent years, a large number of public officials and the public recognized the importance of government's role in investing in technology research and development. Realistic, aggressive goals need to be set as national priorities.