Comment by thaumasiotes
6 years ago
> I was young and wanted to work on problems I thought would have high impact, shit they did have large impact.
I read something to the effect that post-WWII, the British government decided the future was in three technologies: nuclear power, aviation, and computers. So they set out to make sure the UK took its rightful place as master of the future, slanting policy heavily towards those ideas.
And wow, they were three for three on predictions. But somehow the place of the UK in those technologies isn't quite what they would have hoped.
I'd be interested in seeing where you read that, because they absolutely failed to do anything useful about it almost all of the time. And at the expense of the rocket program too.
Dunno about the government, but ARM and Rolls Royce have certainly done very well in their given fields. Curiously they are parts suppliers, not whole product manufacturers.
RR are only alive because they're strategically important enough to warrant being bailed out several times. They were nationalised in the 70s, and looks like they're in trouble again: https://bdaily.co.uk/articles/2018/06/14/government-has-to-i...
ARM are one of the few fully homegrown tech success stories, along with Racal/Vodafone. Unfortunately the UK has a history of "technologically successful but economically unviable" projects, and isn't able to take advantage of the startup logic where investors cover the losses.