We see evidence of this today. Public broadcasting is constantly under-funded. The bulk of popular television programming is based in fantasy. Society has an inherent interest in entertainment. Perhaps the problem with factual information is its inevitable expiration.
Few people watch the same documentary twice.
New generations of CPUs are sometimes redesigns of the same core materials - in other words, software on a chip. For example, a process patent may describe a dramatically new method of data mining with practical applications in many industries with data warehouses. The inventor develops a software program that executes the data mining process. The program becomes freely distributable and the process is part of the public domain. The incentive to create may not be the prospect of instant wealth for our particular inventor.