Speaking to workers at the 3M corporate headquarters in Maplewood, Minn., the president used DoD's investment in the research and development that ultimately led to the Internet as a model for the innovation he hopes to spark nationwide.

"I don't know if people realize this, but the Internet began as a Defense Department project to improve military communications," Bush told the group. "In other words, we were trying to figure out how to better communicate, here was research money spent, and as a result of this sound investment, the Internet came to be."

I love how the "I don't know" clause really folksies up the speech. And did you notice how he used "we", like he was right there on the scene? When Bush was missing his guard duty, he must have been at the Network Working Group. (The time frames do line up relatively closely ...)

Not only did the government invent the iPod, it also invented the Internet. (By the way, has anyone told the Queen the truth about the iPod?)

Bush's version of the story is so neat and tidy. Who needs the 268 pages that Janet Abbate wrote?

Bush's speech calls to mind this excerpt from Drucker:

Futurists always measure their batting average by counting how many things they have predicted that have come true. They never count how many important things come true that they did not predict. Everything a forecaster predicts may come to pass. Yet, he may not have seen the most meaningful of the emergent realities or, worse still, may not have paid attention to them. There is no way to avoid this irrelevancy in forecasting, for the important and distinctive are always the result of changes in values, perception and goals, that is, in things that one can divine but not forecast.

If only there were more women in engineering, our diamond turning machines would weigh 150 tons, they would use measurements 100 times smaller than the human hair, and they would be connected to the Internet. Just think how much sharper our chain saws could be!