Comment by vlovich123
9 days ago
One reason Bell Labs is remembered so fondly for the innovations is that they really only benefited the broader world once Bell was broken up.
I’ll also challenge the assumption that these companies only do R&D if it’s immediately profitable. For example, Microsoft and Google both are investing heavily in quantum computers despite the fact that it’s unclear that that is a profitable endeavor (or profitable to be the ones putting the upfront capital so early). Google also has the X moonshot lab that is trying to do similar things to Bell Labs. I think there’s just a lot of romanticism of the golden age when developments were relatively easier because we hadn’t exhausted the low hanging fruit of applied quantum and material sciences.
[I wish HN could host more long-running threads like SO as these topics require substantial back & forth]
Lasers? Information theory? Transistors?? Silicon tech in general? If you think hype-&-wishful-thinking-driven Google now or ever can be compared with Bell Labs.. you might just be a recent immigrant. The atmosphere at BL, I'm told, was way different. More an indefinite excitement (what can we do with quantum??) rather than the definite, closely guarded, superstition of Thiel ("quantum computing is the next big secret!!")
(Or maybe it's just that old subdued Jewish atheism of the East Coast vs the neurotic ambitious religiosity of California!)
I'm less biased against your low-hanging fruit framework.. still, I suspect that a rival framework based on the minimal attention paid to teaching undergrads at American universities would surpass it. I.e. materials science knowledge base has been spreading only about as quickly as the Baumol cost disease
2 other issues,
Even if there are low-hanging fruits in STEMM (of which I think there are still aplenty), infotech and especially advertising fruits are thought to be strewn all over the floor.
With AI, both thinkers & doers get into this weird emo haze of hubris+laziness, expecting neuro-furniture rearrangement to turn magically into paradigm shifts
There is also the negative effect of over-expensive ip blocking product development as no new product with unclear potential can take on prohibitive license costs.
Microsoft and Google are not representative of most companies.
They have to invest in the innovation. Investor returns for most other companies are based on copy and paste.
What about Meta^W Amazon*.. is their innovation too directed/constrained/product-based?
(I regret to inform you that HN are still withholding my comment upvote privileges)
*Because the gender of their founder is Kind Inventor