I would not be writing, nor you reading, this unless an organization called DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) existed, was funded and had a long range view, for out of the work of DARPA in the 1960s came the Internet and a heck of a lot more technology.
The '60s were an era when the federal government invested in our country's future; it was not obsessed with the latest quarter. Now, it appears as though the people in power do not want to look beyond tomorrow. Witness: DARPA funding for long range research went from $214,000,000 to $123,000,000 from 2001 to 2004. Witness: our R&D funding ranks sixth in terms of our GDP; it's 2.7% of GDP. In Israel it's 4.4%, Sweden 3.8%, Finland 3.4%, Japan 3% and Iceland 2.9%. It's not only DARPA; it's most of the federal budget that had been devoted to long term research.
The result is that the number of patents that the US Patent Office issues to China, India and Japan has grown from 5% to 19% of all applications in the period 1989 to 2001.
India graduates 184,000 engineers annually. China graduates more, over 200,000. The US graduates 60,000. Our government's declining support of the sciences has to be responsible in some way for this.
Innovation and education made this country great. The results of innovation and education take time. Why won't our government realize this?
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