[HN Gopher] The Influence of Bell Labs
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The Influence of Bell Labs
Author : mooreds
Score : 51 points
Date : 2024-11-29 18:36 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.construction-physics.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.construction-physics.com)
| kranke155 wrote:
| Just reading the book The Idea Factory, it was incredible amount
| of innovation. Lasers, early satellites, transistors.
|
| And it was all done, apparently, at least in the beginning,
| because they hired smart people and they let them do what they
| wanted.
| fuzztester wrote:
| unix, c and c++ too.
| kranke155 wrote:
| Haven't gotten to that part of the book.
| jhbadger wrote:
| And S, the statistical data language that was the ancestor of
| S-PLUS and R.
| ioblomov wrote:
| All true, but monopoly profits sure help.
| rmorey wrote:
| I know the author, Jon. Delightful guy
| Aloha wrote:
| The research done at Bell Labs is the foundation of the
| information age, however, Bell Labs sowed the seeds that made the
| post-divestiture AT&T a doomed enterprise from the start - there
| is a reason they only lasted ~20 years from divestiture 'til they
| were bought by one of their former children, SBC.
|
| AT&T provided for most of its history, the best quality telephone
| service in the world, at a comparable price to anyone else,
| anywhere.
|
| There were structural issues with the AT&T monopoly however, for
| example cross subsidization - the true cost of services was often
| hidden because they would use optional services (like toll
| calling) to subsidize basic access, and business lines would
| cross subsidize residential service.
|
| The level that AT&T fought foreign connections (aka, bring your
| own phone), probably hastened their demise, in the end, the very
| technologies that AT&T introduced would turn long distance from a
| high margin, to low margin business - the brass at AT&T had to
| know that, but they still pinned the future of their
| manufacturing business on that - a manufacturing business that
| had never had to work in a competitive environment, yet was now
| expected to - because of this and other factors divestiture was
| doomed to failure.
|
| I'm a believer in utilities being a natural monopoly, but AT&T
| was an example of effective regulatory capture, it did not, and
| does not have to be this way, however it was.
| phtrivier wrote:
| Okay, I'm really in a sad mood, so: tell me there will be places
| like that, again, somewhere, ever ?
|
| We need this. Like, really, we need someone to have created the
| xerox part of the 21st century, somewhere about 20 years ago.
|
| I honestly though Google would be that - but apparently it's
| easier to fund R&D on "selling copying machines" than "selling
| ads". Maybe "selling ads" earn _too much_ money ? I don't know.
|
| I know, I know, DeepMind and OpenAI and xAI are supposed to fix
| climate change any time soon, and cure cancer while they invent
| cold fusion etc, etc... and it's only because I'm a pessimistic
| myopist that I can only see them writing fake essays and
| generating spam, bad me.
|
| Still. Assuming I'm really grumpy and want to talk about people
| doing research that affects the physical world in positive way -
| who's doing that on the scale of PARC or Bell ?
| querez wrote:
| > honestly though Google would be that - but apparently it's
| easier to fund R&D on "selling copying machines" than "selling
| ads". Maybe "selling ads" earn _too much_ money ? I don't know.
|
| I'm pretty sure Google Brain was exactly what you are looking
| for: People like to think of DeepMind, but honestly, Brain
| pretty much had Bell Labs/PARCs strategy: they hired a bunch of
| brilliant people and told them to just "research whatever is
| you think is cool". And think all the AI innovations that came
| out of Brain and were given to the world for free:
| Transformers, Diffusion Models, BERT (I'd consider that the
| first public LLM), Adam, and a gazillion of other cool stuff I
| can't think of right now.... Essentially, all of the current
| AI/LLM craze started at Brain.
| phtrivier wrote:
| Right. And I'm sure that if I ever get in a better mood, I'll
| find that the current AI/LLM craze is good for _something_.
|
| Right now the world needs GWh batteries made of salt, cheap
| fusion from trash, telepathy, a cure for cancer and a vaccine
| for the common cold - but in the meantime, advertisers can
| generate photos for their ads, which is, _good_, I guess ?
| aatd86 wrote:
| Can't you get telepathy from training AI on functional MRI
| data? And then finding a way to pinpoint and activate brain
| regions remotely?
|
| I mean brain-machine interfaces have been improving for
| quite a while.
|
| Telepathy might even already exist.
| eurikfkdks wrote:
| Rolling back the 1980s neoliberal cultural ideals of
| letting markets and profits be the highest arbiter of
| societal direction is the key.
|
| Silicon Valley hippies have been replaced by folks focussed
| on monetisation and growth.
|
| It's not great for the west, but those problems are being
| tackled. We just don't get to read about it because 'China
| bad' and the fear of what capital flight might do to
| arguably inflated US stock prices
|
| https://www.energy-storage.news/byd-launches-sodium-ion-
| grid...
| linguae wrote:
| During my teenage and college years in the 2000s, I was inspired
| by what I've read about Bell Labs, and I wanted to work as a
| computer science researcher in industry. I've also been inspired
| by Xerox PARC's 1970s and 1980s researchers. I pursued that goal,
| and I've worked for a few industrial research labs before I
| switched careers to full-time community college teaching a few
| months ago.
|
| One thing I lament is the decline of long-term, unfettered
| research across the industry. I've witnessed more companies
| switching to research management models where management exerts
| more control over the research directions of their employees,
| where research directions can abruptly change due to management
| decisions, and where there is an increased focus on
| profitability. I feel this short-term approach will cost society
| in the long term, since current funding models promote
| evolutionary work rather than riskier, potentially revolutionary
| work.
|
| As someone who wanted to become a researcher out of curiosity and
| exploration, I feel alienated in this world where industry
| researchers are harangued about "delivering value," and where
| academic researchers are pressured to raise grant money and to
| publish. I quit and switched to a full teaching career at a
| community college. I enjoy teaching, and while I miss the day-to-
| day lifestyle of research, I still plan to do research during my
| summer and winter breaks out of curiosity and not for career
| advancement.
|
| It would be great if there were more opportunities for
| researchers to pursue their interests. Sadly, though, barring a
| cultural change, the only avenues I see for curiosity-driven
| researchers are becoming independently wealthy, living like a
| monk, or finding a job with ample free time. I'm fortunate to
| have the latter situation where I have 16 weeks per year that I
| could devote outside my job.
| rfmoz wrote:
| Inline with this, the talk from Richard Hamming "You and Your
| Research" (June 6, 1995)
|
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=a1zDuOPkMSw
| Swizec wrote:
| Everyone wants Bell Labs, but not the thing that made it possible
| -- high corporate profit taxes. They were making bucket loads of
| monopoly money and had to put it _somewhere_ or taxes would it
| away.
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