The situation since 1969

What is the difference between the situation in those heady days and the world as we experience it today? One obvious thing that did not really exist back then was political correctness and all the other related issues that were discussed in some depth in Part 1, and no doubt all these considerations have contributed somewhat to the situation. However, even considering all these effects, I do not feel they fully explain the apparent difference in technological achievements from 1939-1969 and, say, 1989-2019; so, what does? Many of the advances prior to 1969 emerged either from tax-funded universities or from other publicly funded organisations. An early example is the pioneering work of Charles Babbage, the father of all computing, which was directly funded by the British government; while later the first programmable electronic computer was built in the University of Manchester. Even the internet emerged through a publicly funded organisation - the world's first web server was used by Berners-Lee at CERN. What all these endeavours, and nearly all the inventions mentioned above, required, was a good deal of courage on the part of the inventors concerned. However, courage is perhaps not a characteristic one would tend to naturally associate with today’s publicly funded institutions. In fact, after 30 years of working in academia I can confirm that universities are, without a doubt, risk averse.