Why was this technology not privately kept as property of the United States Government? Why was it given away, completely free of charge, to anyone in the world who wanted a copy? What exactly did we receive in return? Nothing much, that I know of.
Therein lies the problem.
First off as was written in the chapter quoted, the cluster (parrallel computing), is a very old idea, Think IBM and Amdahl back in the sixties.
Anyway, what did we get in return? Okay, we took obsolecent spare computers lying around and turned them into a supercomputer to serve the needs of a civilian scientific R&D agency of USGOV. Saved taxpayer money and contributed to scientific research. BTW: Aren't the taxpayers supposed to get some tangible bennefits from federal expenditures? Why can't a small start up business make use of such computing power?
Knowledge, learned either as a result of building and programming such a system, and/or the results it yielded, at a fraction of the cost of a shiney new IBM or Cray and the millions in costs that went along with them.
Shared knowledge, tends to create even more inovations, not to mention educating and expanding the knowledge of sudents AND teachers of the computing sciences. And basically contributing to the future of systems and artificial intelligence. Scary and exciting all the same.
I know you think that all ideas should be contained and controlled, espcially by the USGOV or MightyBig Corp, but I'd like to think that even if there's a seemingly level playing field, we'll make better use if it. In any event, people aren't stupid, some even have a tendency to come up with similar ideas independently - accross oceans even.
And no, we're not locking the internet. BTW: The DoD basically gave away all its research and infrastructure on their little invention. If you're really that concerned with USGOV giving away such technologies; you're too late.