In the highly modernized and urbanized present, most of the technology in our lives are influenced by government and policy. In the world of emerging technologies, many of them are born with the support of the government and other departments.
For example, the Internet, which we now use extensively and even depend on for our survival, was originally created with the financial support of the U.S. Department of Defense. The predecessor of the Internet was ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network), a project initiated by the U.S. Department of Defense’s Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA, now known as DARPA) in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The project was designed to create a stable and secure communications network. The concept was first proposed by J.C.R. Licklider in the early 1960s and further developed into the ARPANET project, headed by Lawrence Roberts.The design of ARPANET drew on the concept of packet switching, a technology that breaks up data into smaller pieces and sends them out in separate packets. This allowed the network to transmit data more efficiently and improved its reliability. Speaking of this we can not skip the TCP/IP protocol, which was developed by Vinton Cerf and Bob Kahn in order to better manage and connect ARPANET’s growing number of nodes, and which became the foundation protocol for the Internet. In 1983, ARPANET moved to the TCP/IP protocol, marking the official birth of the Internet.
The development of ARPANET is a good example to show us that government-funded technology projects will have more stable financial support and the research and development process will proceed more smoothly. It demonstrates that government-supported technological innovations are usually more able to take the high risk and high reward. When these innovations are successful, the country and its people will also be the first beneficiaries. Yet government investment can also have some drawbacks. For example, there is more government control and regulation in implementing the innovation. Government investment also often influences the market and the industry, and the funding of some projects may lead to an uneven distribution of resources.
However, the creation of new and emerging technologies is not something that can be achieved by one person or one department or one organization alone. It is usually the result of a collaborative effort. I believe that the promotion of a technology cannot be achieved without the support of the Government. It is indeed the government’s responsibility to promote new technologies, so that people can live a better life and the country can develop better. But corporations and open sources ventures are the main forces where technological innovation takes place. The government, on the other hand, should be more capable of identifying and discovering promising technologies and providing timely support and funding.
