I'm going to select option B, which is give at the end of the article, suggesting that Terry Freedman has "finally turned into the archetypal cynical grumpy old man sitting in the corner of the staffroom mumbling!" Why? Well, it's that the generalization in the headline is simply false. Sure, not everything works. But most of the technology initiatives governments have funded in universities actually have worked. In this part of the world, I can cite the student support programs run both federally and provincially and the research funding councils. But if you want something that is more directly technical, I might point to things like CANARIE, the national fibre-optic backbone, or the TRIUMF particle acceleration centre, and the CAP grant program putting access to the internet to communities across the nation. The internet itself was a government program, the web came out of CERN, and things ranging from XML to LMSs to MOOCs bar the imprint of government support. The government gets a lot right, a lot more than it is recognized for, and people saying that the government always fails have (a) not really looked at the track record of business in this space, and (b) are grumpy old men sitting in the corner of the staffroom.
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