garote: (machine)

[personal profile] garote 2015-05-03 10:16 pm (UTC)(link)
It's a tribute to the design of the iPhone that it is used in this diagram. All the technologies that surround it in the diagram were also subject to intense private-sector refinement before they grew into the products they are illustrated as. (The example LCD display illustration is actually another Apple product, released some 15-20 years after 1988, for example)

It's true that the U.S. funds experimental research with a breadth and depth unmatched by any other country. You can get funding to shoot for innovations that would be laughed at in other countries.

It's also true that private industry here is very good at both innovation and execution, and deserves plenty of credit for it. Love it or hate it, the iPhone has become the most publicly recognized example of that.
Edited 2015-05-03 22:16 (UTC)

[identity profile] lafinjack.livejournal.com 2015-05-04 12:38 am (UTC)(link)
I do wonder how much 'basic research' would be available if we weren't megafunding the military.

[identity profile] madam-shapo.livejournal.com 2015-05-05 03:06 am (UTC)(link)
Wasn't FFT discovered by Gauss, dead 200 years ago.