Speaking of govt-bus partnership

Speaking of the U.S.'s long tradition of government-business partnership in matters technological, . . . Stevel Lohr reports in the New York Times this morning that six technology companies are "forming a consortium [called Globus Consortium] to accelerate the adoption of utility-like grid computing in the corporate world." As with so much of twentieth-century technology, the federal government served as incubator and midwife of Globus Consortium's software for grid computing. "The government provided most of the early finances to develop the software," he writes, "which is freely shared, open-source code."

Steve Lohr, "New Group Will Promote Grid Computing for Business," New York Times, 1/24/05, C7.

Who provided that early financing? Based on past history, the likeliest candidate would be the Department of Defense's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency or DARPA, and sure enough, as it reported in 2002 (go to http://www.darpa.gov and search for "grid computing"), it was involved, along with the Department of Energy and IBM.