> Every sliver of fundamental technology in the iPhone, from the internet to batteries and from touchscreens to voice recognition, was invented by researchers on the government payroll.
This is bullshit, but it's very pernicious bullshit because while it only takes one person to pull this out of their ass, no one person can refute it. No one person can articulate where all the stuff in an iPhone came from; abstraction is one of the true marvels of technology today
We can certainly point out where various technologies were first discovered, and quite often it is academia (with a few exceptions like Bell Labs and Xerox PARC). But I think this is unfair to industry. What industry does is make usable compact products from these discoveries and one shouldn't denigrate this.
I remember Steve Mann from U Toronto demonstrating his augmented reality devices in the 1990s. They were very impressive for the time -- but they required him to wear a backpack of equipment and absurdly large goggles. We still aren't there yet, but Google Glass made his ideas into a semi-practical product.
Indeed this would be very interesting if it was true. Because many new technologies coming out of universities are patented, if Apple is using them as it's research arm, Apple is hopefully paying market price for the tech and hopefully that's a fair amount.
TL;DW The foundation for SV was laid during WWII by unrestrained spending (based on a huge amount of debt of course) by the US government on R&D. Private enterprise only came in once the foundation existed.
This is bullshit, but it's very pernicious bullshit because while it only takes one person to pull this out of their ass, no one person can refute it. No one person can articulate where all the stuff in an iPhone came from; abstraction is one of the true marvels of technology today