One year ago, I made this post over at r/historyofcomputers referencing tech discoveries that might have brought about networks of non-electrical, digital computers for a time, had we been in the business of preserving and sharing knowledge much sooner in our journey through time.

Now I ask, what were the most egregious decisions and other events that slowed the earliest possible development of modern computers/ the Internet (or at least somewhat nation-wide computer networks) until the late 1980s? For all the optimal decisions we could have made and all the cool discoveries we did make, there are likely just as many events and decisions acting as stones in our paths between us and something like what we eventually arrived at in the late 1980s. These stones in our paths sent us down less well-lighted paths, loops we had to recognize and get out of, and some dead ends. Why did we take so long to get past the challenges of these detrimental events and decisions?

Thank you for any historical and scientific knowledge you can pass on.