Of course its partially tongue-in-cheek, but there is a kernel of truth there. You see, I -was- an academic - got my Ph.D. and all. And discovered that the useful work was being done in the "real world." You have a skewed view of things. You name a fair number of real contributions from academia, but fail to measure them against the piles and piles of steaming horse dung that is also generated by academia. If you did that, you'd notice that things like Mosaic (or for that matter, Akamai) come very very few, and frighteningly far between.

If you get out of the house, you'll learn that the plot to "A Bug's Life" was just a re-hash of Akira Kurosawa's "Seven Samurai", as was Galaxy Quest and just about every other comedic action film on the planet.