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The Influence of Bell Labs

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Re: The Influence of Bell Labs

#121

Post by rr808 »

linguae wrote: post #10

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 de…

I think Fang companies have a lot of curiosity driven research, just the output is open source software instead of physical products. AI especially.

Re: The Influence of Bell Labs

#122

Post by WalterBright »

twilo wrote: post #104
gwervc wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the only avenues I see for curiosity-driven researchers are becoming independently wealthy, living like a monk I came to the same conclusion. This is the path I'm following (trying to set up a company and lean FIRE). It's sad in a way because those efforts and years could have been directed to research but we have to adapt.

That was mostly how the big scientific breakthroughs came in the 1800-1900s .. independent wealth. That’s what a “scholar” is and Universities provided the perfect environment for that to thrive, which is no longer the case.

Edison's research lab was funded by companies wanting specific inventions developed.

Re: The Influence of Bell Labs

#123

Post by jonas21 »

phtrivier wrote: post #9

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 kno…

The answer is Google. I'm not sure why you're being so dismissive.

When we look back in 20 years, things like the transformer architecture, AlphaFold (which just won a Nobel prize), and Waymo are going to have improved the world in a positive way as much as anything Bell Labs did, and certainly more than PARC.

Re: The Influence of Bell Labs

#124

Post by bena »

Swizec wrote: post #15

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.

From what I understand, they weren't really allowed to sell anything not related to telephony as well.

So they could create Unix, but they weren't allowed to profit off of it. So they just gave it away, because why not.

Re: The Influence of Bell Labs

#125

Post by thrance »

mensetmanusman wrote: post #115
dartos wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a lot of people want high corporate profit taxes

How else will we know if seatbelts are effective in Africa?

Congrats, you've been brainwashed by billionaires into voting against your interest.

Re: The Influence of Bell Labs

#127

Post by aguaviva »

fragmede wrote: post #77
aguaviva wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t hear about the Oppenheimers and von Neumanns of today’s world Sadder still is the underlying situaiton behind this: the fact that there's nothing of even remotely comparable significance happening in the public sphere for such minds to devote themselves to, as those man did. Even though the current civilization risk if anything significantly greater than in their time.

Even if you don't buy that LLMs and the transformer architecture in particular will lead to AGI, and then artificial super intelligence (ASI), the quest to try and make ASI is far more significant than anything that's ever come before. ASI would be the last thing that humans need to invent. https://youtu.be/fa8k8IQ1_X0

We'll see if it comes to anything, first.

Until then, it doesn't have the property of being significant.

Re: The Influence of Bell Labs

#128

Post by dredmorbius »

anthk wrote: post #109
dredmorbius wrote: post #72

What were the other major R&D labs, corporate or otherwise of this era (roughly: 1880s through 1980s)? I can think of: AT&T, DuPont, Kodak, Xerox PARC, Westinghouse, IBM, GE, the original Edison labs (best as I can tell acquired by Western Union), Microsoft, Rockefeller University, Google Research. Of notable industries and sectors, there's little I can think of in automobile, shipping, aircraft and aviation (though…

MIT's AI Lab with Lisp, ITS and such. They were far ahead of Unix, Bell Labs and Berkeley.

Which suggests SAIL (Stanford) and early Internet collaboration (UCLA, UCSB, and others).

Various advanced computer facilities: UCSD, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Probably others at Carnegie-Mellon, Georgia Tech, and elsewhere.

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