Articles like this always tend to overlook the fact that Bell Labs wasn't unique in its time. And other companies had very similar labs running. A famous example is Xerox Labs which invented the computer mouse and graphical windowing, among other things.
Google had this vibe too, prior to going public.
Missing context here is that Bell labs was at its most productive when it was a government backed monopoly, with the govt insisting that it work in the general public benefit. It’s not possible now because that sort of public-private symbiosis has totally fallen out of favour and regulators just don’t really have the teeth to grab the bull by the horns like that anymore.
Or to put that another way, it would take putting the teeth back in regulation (among other things).
Just use what Bell had before: a monopoly on virtually all communication to pay for crazy ideas and irregular output. Also, stomp out all competition so no one else can make any discoveries of their own. Can't have rivals muddying the history of who invented what.
What that monopoly got us: The C programming language, UNIX, UTF-8, among others
What the current tech monopolies yielded: yachts for the upper management
Hey now, there's also been a lot of enshitification with the new system.
And, yet, in that time, consumers paid more for telecommunication services and basically the main innovations they got were touchtone phones replacing rotary ones and higher bills. Bell Labs being a success story doesn’t mean Ma Bell shouldn’t have been broken up.
If consumers are paying extra to a monopoly anyway, just fund university labs and non-university research agencies (which we do). We have dozens of equivalents to Bell Labs. There’s no reason to rely on monopolists for innovation.
The importance of basic research…
A breakthrough in physics that enables a new technology to have all the benefits and zero downsides of our current globally deployed communication standards. Like true wireless energy, or something that can replace undersea cables.
Well Google was basically that - it revolutionized search, which made the Internet accessible for casual users
And it worked - Google put more into R&D moon shots than anyone... Except the economic META has changed, and everything innovative just ended up in the Google graveyard before it had a chance to mature
Bell Labs worked because they threw excess piles of money at the best people they could find, and they gave them autonomy. They gave them time, and let them build things with no clear application for their company
Today, that money goes into stock buybacks, executive bonuses, and buying out promising startups. Stock prices this quarter are all that matters, and R&D only raises stock prices when it promises insane growth or quick monetization
And, at least from what I recall, the incentive for bell to toss that excess money into research, is the corporate tax rates were so high it would've been taken from them if not spent anyway.
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
