[oivey]

Even things like semiconductors benefitted massively from government research and funding. They’ve certainly taken off from there, though.

I’m trying to think of what industries this might not be the case for. Research thin industries like entertainment and media? Has the development of things like OLED mostly been by private companies? I guess finance? Seemingly if it involves engineering the government at least made the seed investment.

[jjk166]

Just because the government has at some point invested in something doesn't mean it had to for it to take off. Once something is already going strong, it's to be expected that everyone who might stand to benefit will want to hop on the bandwagon, especially once the utility is proven. For example the government was not particularly involved with aircraft development until WW1 when it proved to be of considerable military importance.

It's also worth noting that many developments are unintended spillover from other efforts. For example a lot of US government money went into producing high purity germanium, which would ultimately enable the development of the solid state transistor, but the government wasn't directly trying to produce solid state transistors, they instead were concerned with producing diodes for radars.

In either case, I would not describe it as seed investment.

[mrguyorama]

Government funded research being basically throwing money into the ether and hoping some entire brand new world of chemistry or physics or communications or anything like that is the whole point of government investment. Research into one area providing gains in other unexpected areas is a direct goal of the kind of research the government funds.

You know, like, the internet. The government wanted to make sure that nuking one air force base couldn't prevent the retaliation strike, so let's make a big network that is scalable, re-routable on the fly, and simple to put together. Creating a brand new sector of the economy and dominating the new sector with the likes of google and microsoft and apple was the exact outcome optimistic government employees would wish for.

[sdflhasjd]

Not sure I'd call OLED game changing in the same way the Internet or Jet Engines are.