On: Bringing back the golden days of Bell Labs

[kqr]

The question isn't whether those things are nice, it's whether they wouldn't have been developed as fast in a competitive environment.

(Personally, I think just based on human nature that competition is anti-innovative in the long run, but I can't prove anything either way.)

[bluGill → kqr]

The question is what we lost because we did those things.

We know what happened, we don't know what alternative histories would have been like. We don't know if they would have been better or worse.

[CamperBob2 → bluGill]

It's not a perfect answer, but we can look at other industrialized countries where nothing like Bell Labs existed.

An easy citation would be CERN. They gave us the WWW, but then CERN is a monopoly in its own right, given that no one else has similar facilities, similar requirements, or a comparable base of talent to draw from.

Other than CERN, I'm drawing a blank here. Examples, anyone?

[fatjokes → CamperBob2]

I would argue we have examples now: Google Research, Deepmind, MSR, IBM Research, AT&T Labs, FAIR...

I would argue that all their combined achievements don't add up to Bell Labs'. (IBM Research Zurich as a couple of Nobels I think). Certainly at least one reason is that these labs have pressure to bring some of their research to market rather than solve for the long term.

[bluGill → CamperBob2]

Not at all because all later research was influenced by what went before. And of course all those people doing the work were not doing something else.