Finally, the committee addressed social, economic, and workforce issues, recommending investment in four areas. Increased use of IT in education would enhance the IT-literacy of the population, rendering it more productive and competitive in emerging global markets. Finally, the committee recommended an increase in the resources devoted to sorting out the economic and policy implications of technological progress. The committee made an effort to anticipate questions sure to be asked. To take money away from them now would bring important work to a halt, and encourage key personnel to leave the industry.
Private corporations are neither willing nor able to fund the needed long-term research.
Only the richest corporations can afford the long lead times and considerable risks inherent in basic research. If anyone knew how to shorten those lead times, or eliminate those risks, research would no longer be research. Corporations have no incentive to fund and develop the sorts of revolutionary technologies that might disrupt their own profit streams. It is more prudent to go on attaching bells and whistles to successive generations of an existing technology, in which their competitive advantages relative to rival suppliers are well established. When governments support basic research, and then make the results available to all comers, opportunities are created for venture capitalists, currently among the most dynamic, envied, and admired forces in the global economy.