A little reflection on the subject of previous post helps to understand what separates the US from the rest of the world in terms of innovation.
As I said, the “ Claytrons ” or “Catoms”, used in “programmable matter”, began to be developed by University of Carnegie Mellon’s With Intel and DARPA funds. Nothing less than the world's largest semiconductor manufacturer who, whether using PC or MAC, is almost certainly the computer processor supplier of your PC, and the U.S. Ministry of Defense's research agency that was only the main responsible for creating the... Internet.
If we think of Portugal, how many innovation projects do you know with help and funds from entities with enough muscle to ensure its presence is a guarantee of success?
Even though we are recognizably capable of inventing and doing, will we ever have support for an Intel and DARPA scale? It's just that it doesn't seem to... help. And this is one of the main mistakes of Globalisation: to believe that we are all now equally global.
Of course we're Global, but after all, some will always be more than others.