It's no surprise that the revolutionary technologies of the internet were developed and deployed by (gasp) the Government. It wasn't until the internet was already well-established that commercial interests started to pay attention.
Actually, the initial development was done almost entirely by think tanks (Rand Corp., BBN, etc.) and academics, with the crucial piece being supplied by the concept of packet switching, invented by Paul Baran at Rand Corp.
The essence of government is centralization of power over individuals. The essence of the internet is decentralization of communication among individuals.
The internet was a revolutionary invention because it solved a revolutionary problem: how to maintain communications after a massive nuclear attack. Pentagon (DARPA) money was behind most of this because it was the Pentagon that was responsible for solving the problem. More to the point, the key technologies that the internet depended on were the transistor (AT&T/Bell Labs) and the integrated circuit/microprocessor (Intel).
The New York Times discusses how technology flows from federally-funded research to industry. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/02/technology/02darpa.html
I agree that national states are centralized institutions, but corporations are another type of hierarchical power structure with their own set of disadvantages.
Eventually these new companies become the 'big companies'... but by then they are also hopelessly out of date because processes and tools have become ingrained and can only change incrementally. The cycle begins anew.
But profitability is a function of competitive alternatives. Many technologies act like electricity, they dramatically improve productivity without necessarily leading to higher levels of profitability because of adoption by competitors.
When will they ever learn? Wasn't it Thom Watson himself who said the world only needs about five computers? (Sorry, no record can be found.) Or Gates who said 640K is enough RAM for anybody? (Sorry, no record can be found.)
Many great things are counter-intuitive. Like, beating the House in Vegas. But, then, when they react violently, can't you show them a simulation that demonstrates that their intuitions can be beat?
If you pitch something completely new, many people will look at you like you are from Mars. My startup's product has the potential to drastically improve the profitability of a lot of businesses. However, when we pitch it for what it is, people tend to react fairly violently, because it runs counter to a lot of their intuitions.
In order to get any traction, we have had to pitch it as an incremental improvement, with the real game changers hidden behind the scenes.