Sure we wouldn't be where we are today without the money chucked at it (of course as a defence project it could have been done far cheaper by almost anyone else. This isn't a dig at US defence contractors, it's a dig at the
Worlds defence projects.
))
I would definetly dispute the technical foresight part. It was a task specific job, nobody involved was planning for any big public use. Oh sure maybe the odd one or two lower down, but I'd bet none of the money men.
A final point, the best technical system regularly loses. Everything from Betamax and Minidisc through to hardware standards and fighter jets (TSR-2 **sob**). Marketing and politics normally determines it.
In this case as TCP/IP was used by the millitary and universites it had an unmatchable deployed base and
couldn't lose.
Much like Windows actually. It doesn't matter what the future versions are like, the installed base is so high developers only work on the MS version (others if they have time, which they normally don't) and it's up to bodges and fixes to get programmes to work on other platforms.