Comment by mattquinn
14 years ago
"Regrettably, we now use ["innovation"] to describe almost anything. It can describe a smartphone app or a social media tool; or it can describe the transistor or the blueprint for a cellphone system. The differences are immense."
I cannot agree with this more. We may not be able to re-create the environment of Bell Labs, but I'm hoping to see more in terms of actual science (and it will be at the nano-scale) in the future, rather than seeing so many people create yet another social app, claiming that it's "revolutionizing" an industry.
Exactly. Also, the word "technology" is now sometimes used to simply describe a certain piece of software middleware.
While some fascinating Bell-labs-like research is taking place at IBM and Microsoft, newer tech giants have opted to foster creation of lots of competing startups to do research for them, so that they're able to spend money (through acquisition) only on the successful ideas, rather than develop their own large and expensive research departments. The result has been that startups often focus (in fact, they are strongly advised to focus - for example in numerous blog posts that are widely popular here on HN) on ideas that can generate market value within a couple of years. They actually have no choice because otherwise they are losing their chances for investments and/or lucrative exits.
This is not to say that most people working in startups are the same type of people who could have worked at Bell Labs - they aren't. Most of them are "simple" engineers well versed in current "technologies" but are uninterested or unable to break new frontiers (this is not meant as a negative statement). However, quite a few of them are capable and interested, but the money and the Silicon Valley game are simply too enticing.
I often feel angry at Google particularly, who've taken quite a few bright and inquisitive minds from more innovative companies, like Sun Microsystems (RIP), and turned them into application builders.
But the game has changed, money, and a lot of it, could be made from technology much faster now than before, and many minds who could have been used for true innovations are now working on designing social networks (which is an interesting research topic, but not THAT interesting, and there are certainly other less explored avenues that lead to truer innovation).
> "Most of them are "simple" engineers well versed in current "technologies" but are uninterested or unable to break new frontiers".
I'm glad you said this because I feel as if it needs to be reiterated much more often. I'm a CS student right now, and a lot of times I look around and see my university's CS program as a factory designed to turn out by-the-book software engineers fit for corporate consumption.
I really enjoy CS, but here's my anecdote: the other day I got a chance to tour a microfabrication lab, with tons of expensive equipment and a lot of knowledgeable people milling about (who I'm sure were nervous with us being there). That really instilled an appreciation of the complexities involved with real, true innovation. I love writing software, but I won't do it forever, because the vast majority of true innovation really does require a deep understanding of scientific foundations.
Also: the guy who showed us around worked for Bell Labs for awhile before coming to the university where I'm studying. His one pre-condition for accepting the university job: the $2 million, room-size, laser-equipped system that he built for detecting flaws in silicon wafers had to come with him.
Are you talking about science in general? There's enough science left to do on the macroscale, too.
Science isn't a finite spectrum, so of course there's much to be done in all fields. But this article specifically laments the fact that the term "innovation" is no longer strongly associated with substantive breakthroughs in relatively unknown areas.
Bell Labs pioneered many practical applications of microscience; nanoscience is the next level down that remains vastly unexplored and has very few practical applications associated with it (yet).