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The Influence of Bell Labs

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Re: The Influence of Bell Labs

#61

Post by mixdup »

linguae wrote: post #28
zusammen wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The secret hero of that time was the US government. I’m not talking about the MIC, which is still quite robust and more bad than good. I am speaking more broadly. If you had a practical PhD and were willing to show up at a place at 9:00, you could get a solid upper middle class job with the Feds where you couldn’t get fired unless you broke the law. The government also has always kept academia afloat. It is a privile…

Something that just dawned on me is the downstream effects of United States’ policy regarding science during WWII and the Cold War. The Manhattan Project, NASA, the NSA and all of its contributions to mathematics and cryptography, ARPA, DARPA, and many other agencies and programs not only directly contributed to science, but they also helped form a scientific culture that affected not only government-ran and governme…

>It’s not that technology isn’t revered; far from it. It’s just that “stopping Hitler,” “beating the Soviets,” and grand visions for society have been replaced with visions of creating lucrative businesses

Universities are tripping over themselves to create commercialization departments and every other faculty member in departments that can make money (like CS) has a private company on the side. Weird that when these things hit, though, the money never comes back to the schools

Re: The Influence of Bell Labs

#62

Post by mixdup »

Aloha wrote: post #8

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 anyo…

Eventually the cable guys were coming for AT&T's lunch, regardless of what happened with their monopoly. It's the rare circumstance where two seemingly unrelated utilities converged into the same business (moving bits, instead of analog video or audio) and we lucked into having two internet facilities in large portions of the country

Re: The Influence of Bell Labs

#63

Post by pinewurst »

l33t7332273 wrote: post #56
pinewurst wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m hoping this is sarcasm deserving my heart-felt belly laugh. FANG (or whatever the backcronym is these days) “selective hiring” is just puzzle driven mediocrity with a ridiculous amount of elect self-praise at their own good fortune. And “performance metrics”, give me a break - product innovation is in the toilet and product quality even further down the drain. Unless you’re talking about advanced PR and market ma…

I agree with the vibes of your comment, but I have to reply to this: > Unless you’re talking about advanced PR and market manipulation techniques to capture and retain ad revenue Those very much _are_ the goals at those enterprises.

Indeed they are, but my point is that _these_ goals are hardly admirable. At the same time, the claimed innovations aren’t real, at least in the sense that anything in any issue of the Bell Labs Technical Journal was. “Apps”, etc? This is like giving the Medellín cartel credit for their hippo culture while ignoring the basis of their real success.

Re: The Influence of Bell Labs

#64

Post by aprdm »

linguae wrote: post #34
RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The truth is that kind of research can only happen with a very rich monopoly. Bell labs came about when AT&T was the monopoly telephone provider in the US. PARC happened when Xerox had a very lucrative monopoly on copy machines.

I have come to realize that over the years, though I still believe that wealthier companies like Apple, NVIDIA, Facebook, and the like could fund curiosity-driven research, even if it’s not at the scale of Bell Labs or Xerox PARC. On a smaller scale, there is The Institute for Advanced Study where curiosity-driven research is encouraged, and there is the MacArthur Fellowship where fellows are granted $150,000 annual…

What makes you think they don't fund it ?

Re: The Influence of Bell Labs

#65

Post by fsckboy »

dartos wrote: post #43
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.

I think a lot of people want high corporate profit taxes

people own corporations. If you tax the income of people who own corporations, it's not necessarily necessary to tax corporations; just pass their profits through to the people and tax the people. There are good reasons not to double-tax, first at the corporate level and then again at the personal level.

Re: The Influence of Bell Labs

#66

Post by ggm »

l33t7332273 wrote: post #57
ggm wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think my reading of your comment is: that's just wrong. And I tend to agree. The current STEM and FAANG activity is second order work in the main. I wouldn't hold AI work up as a paragon, myself. It's diverting from progress across a field. I have hopes of a resurgence of operations research and linear optimisation as goods in themselves: we could be plotting more nuanced courses in dark waters of competing pressur…

Do you think there is room for a resurgence in linear optimization? Linear programming, and even integer linear programming are pretty well solved practically speaking.

I tried using some online systems to help formulate weighted sum decisions over unrankable choices and it's bloody hard work getting people on board. I think how the logic presents could improve.

This stuff while old, is not routine for decision makers. They don't seem to grok how to formulate the questions and the choices.

Re: The Influence of Bell Labs

#67

Post by lotsofpulp »

aguaviva wrote: post #42
linguae wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something that just dawned on me is the downstream effects of United States’ policy regarding science during WWII and the Cold War. The Manhattan Project, NASA, the NSA and all of its contributions to mathematics and cryptography, ARPA, DARPA, and many other agencies and programs not only directly contributed to science, but they also helped form a scientific culture that affected not only government-ran and governme…

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.

I feel like having access to instant high definition video communication and to the world’s repository of text, audio, and video information at a moment’s notice from a device in your pocket is of comparable, if not more, significance.

These innovations in LEDs, battery technology, low power high performance microchips with features measured in number of atoms is extraordinary, and seemingly taken for granted.

Then we also have medicines that can even bend one’s desire to over eat or even drink alcohol, not to mention better vaccines, cancer therapies, and so on and so forth.

Re: The Influence of Bell Labs

#69

Post by teleforce »

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #33
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…

The truth is that kind of research can only happen with a very rich monopoly. Bell labs came about when AT&T was the monopoly telephone provider in the US. PARC happened when Xerox had a very lucrative monopoly on copy machines.

That's my conclusion as well since now the closest we have to Bell Labs is the Google R&D where it has a virtual monopoly on Internet search and it's able to hire excellent well paid researchers [1].

[1] US weighs Google break-up in landmark antitrust case:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41784599

Re: The Influence of Bell Labs

#70

Post by teleforce »

If you want to understand and appreciate Bell Labs innovation eco-system from first hand account and perspective of its researcher while at the same time learning to perform research based innovations, please check this book written by one of its celebrated researchers Richard Hamming [1].

[1] The Art of Doing Science and Engineering:

https://press.stripe.com/the-art-of-doing-science-and-engine...

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