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Since I don’t see any other comments mentioning it: wow, Bell Labs was preserved as a kind of public multi-use space? That’s wild, I had no idea. I’m glad they

by gdubs 6y ago

Since I don’t see any other comments mentioning it: wow, Bell Labs was preserved as a kind of public multi-use space? That’s wild, I had no idea. I’m glad they didn’t tear it down for McMansions as the article explains was the plan before preservationists intervened. It’s a very cool structure with historical significance. Bell Labs is particularly relevant to this crowd here in HN - it’s arguably the birthplace of our whole industry, and people have tried replicating its magic over the years. To me the architect in the article is too quick to dismiss the premise of Bell Labs — giving researchers privacy and pastoral views. Sounds a lot like early Silicon Valley to me. They claim that it’s actually just the chance encounters that were important. There’s some truth to that — Steve Jobs famously designed the Pixar campus to maximize chance encounters. But I wouldn’t be so quick to discount a degree of space and privacy. That’s kind of central to the whole discussion: the human balance between a need for privacy and a need for community. People want space, and they also want to be able to visit areas of density, and walk around. This used to be the mall, the big box bookstores. I actually think this article was very interesting, and the architect was very articulate about a lot of things. But I’m not sure we’ve actually solved the core question: why did the malls decay? What changed? Was it e commerce? The shrinking middle class? Traffic just getting too snarled with no real solution?

cushychicken 6y ago
Knew I wasn't going to have to scroll far in the comments section to find discussion about Bell Labs. :) That's a very cool office structure. I'm glad they repurposed it for a more cooperative use suited to the times. To me the architect in the article is too quick to dismiss the premise of Bell Labs — giving researchers privacy and pastoral views. A great discussion point re: Bell Labs that I read in an HN thread long, long ago was that research labs of this type (Bell Labs, Google X, Xerox PARC, etc.) only arise in monopoly conditions. Basic research only becomes supportable from an organizational overhead and ROI standpoint when there is no meaningful competition to the parent organization. It implies another large and very interesting question: are the net benefits of places like Bell Labs worth the costs that come with tolerating monopolies? More to the point of the topic at hand: is the monolithic structure of Bell Labs, the building, worth the costs it has imposed on the shape of its surrounding community?
- geofft 6y ago
  It's not monopoly conditions per se, I think. It's just the lack of compelled profit motive that gets you the ability to do basic research/exploration. Society has another mechanism for people to do research without a profit motive - the university - but for various reasons that's been working poorly. (One is that they've sort of developed a profit motive, and at the individual level, researchers need to chase grants.) I don't think the answer is to tolerate monopolies; I think there are ways society can better support people doing open-ended research without just telling a company "Here, have all the money you want and no accountability." I don't think De Beers, for instance, produced much valuable research for the world with their monopoly.
  - ghaff 6y ago
    The other thing with universities, comping from the perspective of someone involved with a fairly small corporate research department (which has close ties to a big one)--is that they can be very divorced from the practical/commercial. And it's not necessarily a good thing to be too ivory tower. In fact one of the reasons universities want to work with us (other than the fact we provide internships and jobs for their students) is that we help them to work on things that people actually care about. Not that fundamental research is a bad thing but there's often a happy medium between near-term product development and totally blue sky research.
- praptak 6y ago
  There's more to the story: it was a monopoly that was tolerated by the state under some conditions, like releasing patents. See for example https://voxeu.org/article/how-antitrust-enforcement-can-spur-innovation https://voxeu.org/article/how-antitrust-enforcement-can-spur...
rcpt 6y ago
Yeah Nvidia has a self driving lab there. Interesting office space. I had a job offer from them a few years back but went elsewhere because my wife has no job opportunities in Holmdel.
- geofft 6y ago
  That latter part sounds like another big part of the puzzle. In the last century, you could assume that a) a family had one breadwinner and b) he would expect to work at a single company his whole career. So it would make sense to tell your employees to move to a suburb that is powered by basically a single employer and buy a home there. They could go to "the city" (whichever city) with a 1+ hour commute on weekends or holidays. And employees wouldn't semi-expect to change jobs every few years, so buying a home made sense. Now none of those assumptions hold. Even universities, which historically didn't care to be located in big cities or near other universities, are now facing the "two-body problem" - so many candidates are now part of a couple who both want academic jobs.
  - ghaff 6y ago
    Even if they don't both want academic jobs, what are the odds that the half of a couple who are both STEM professionals who isn't offered the professorship is going to find the ideal job in a Maine college town? (Of course, perhaps going forward, there may be more possibilities to work remotely much of the time.)
  - tomcam 6y ago
    > a) a family had one breadwinner and b) he would expect to work at a single company his whole career. Not disagreeing here, just spitballing. Back then you were likely to live in a small apartment or a Levittown-type house that was about 850 ft sq, was poorly insulated and had no air conditioning. The family shared a single (comparative deathtrap of a) car, there were no cable bills, phone service was inexpensive, you dried your laundry by hanging it up outside, and there was just one TV. I bet one could still afford that lifestyle on today's average salary, no? It seems to me that we just want more stuff now.
AtlasBarfed 6y ago
My mom and stepdad used to work in the Bell Labs NJ building. Proper incentives would make that a perfect vertical farm facility IMO.
- heavyset_go 6y ago
  > Proper incentives would make that a perfect vertical farm facility IMO. Real estate values in the area makes farming a weird choice economically.
fmajid 6y ago
I’ve been to the Bell Labs Holmdel office in the 90s, and every single parking spot was taken, and with a mixed residential development it must be even more in demand. The article spouts a lot of trendy urban-planner ideology, trying to shoehorn facts into a predetermined narrative like hostility to cars. See this blog for why those policies are so misguided: http://ti.org/antiplanner/ http://ti.org/antiplanner/
rsync 6y ago
"People want space, and they also want to be able to visit areas of density, and walk around." From the cell wall to the terminals of a battery to the crossing of the bridge from cow hollow to the Marin Headlands ... energy and potential are found in distinct things that are held apart from one another.
- billforsternz 6y ago
  I googled the italicized part, but no, it seems you just conjured this up yourself. Nice work.
- mountainboy 6y ago
  also, Birkeland Currents in plasma (ionosphere and space)

by gdubs 6y ago

cushychicken 6y ago

Knew I wasn't going to have to scroll far in the comments section to find discussion about Bell Labs. :) That's a very cool office structure. I'm glad they repurposed it for a more cooperative use suited to the times. To me the architect in the article is too quick to dismiss the premise of Bell Labs — giving researchers privacy and pastoral views. A great discussion point re: Bell Labs that I read in an HN thread long, long ago was that research labs of this type (Bell Labs, Google X, Xerox PARC, etc.) only arise in monopoly conditions. Basic research only becomes supportable from an organizational overhead and ROI standpoint when there is no meaningful competition to the parent organization. It implies another large and very interesting question: are the net benefits of places like Bell Labs worth the costs that come with tolerating monopolies? More to the point of the topic at hand: is the monolithic structure of Bell Labs, the building, worth the costs it has imposed on the shape of its surrounding community?

geofft 6y ago
It's not monopoly conditions per se, I think. It's just the lack of compelled profit motive that gets you the ability to do basic research/exploration. Society has another mechanism for people to do research without a profit motive - the university - but for various reasons that's been working poorly. (One is that they've sort of developed a profit motive, and at the individual level, researchers need to chase grants.) I don't think the answer is to tolerate monopolies; I think there are ways society can better support people doing open-ended research without just telling a company "Here, have all the money you want and no accountability." I don't think De Beers, for instance, produced much valuable research for the world with their monopoly.
- ghaff 6y ago
  The other thing with universities, comping from the perspective of someone involved with a fairly small corporate research department (which has close ties to a big one)--is that they can be very divorced from the practical/commercial. And it's not necessarily a good thing to be too ivory tower. In fact one of the reasons universities want to work with us (other than the fact we provide internships and jobs for their students) is that we help them to work on things that people actually care about. Not that fundamental research is a bad thing but there's often a happy medium between near-term product development and totally blue sky research.
praptak 6y ago
There's more to the story: it was a monopoly that was tolerated by the state under some conditions, like releasing patents. See for example https://voxeu.org/article/how-antitrust-enforcement-can-spur-innovation https://voxeu.org/article/how-antitrust-enforcement-can-spur...

rcpt 6y ago

Yeah Nvidia has a self driving lab there. Interesting office space. I had a job offer from them a few years back but went elsewhere because my wife has no job opportunities in Holmdel.

geofft 6y ago
That latter part sounds like another big part of the puzzle. In the last century, you could assume that a) a family had one breadwinner and b) he would expect to work at a single company his whole career. So it would make sense to tell your employees to move to a suburb that is powered by basically a single employer and buy a home there. They could go to "the city" (whichever city) with a 1+ hour commute on weekends or holidays. And employees wouldn't semi-expect to change jobs every few years, so buying a home made sense. Now none of those assumptions hold. Even universities, which historically didn't care to be located in big cities or near other universities, are now facing the "two-body problem" - so many candidates are now part of a couple who both want academic jobs.
- ghaff 6y ago
  Even if they don't both want academic jobs, what are the odds that the half of a couple who are both STEM professionals who isn't offered the professorship is going to find the ideal job in a Maine college town? (Of course, perhaps going forward, there may be more possibilities to work remotely much of the time.)
- tomcam 6y ago
  > a) a family had one breadwinner and b) he would expect to work at a single company his whole career. Not disagreeing here, just spitballing. Back then you were likely to live in a small apartment or a Levittown-type house that was about 850 ft sq, was poorly insulated and had no air conditioning. The family shared a single (comparative deathtrap of a) car, there were no cable bills, phone service was inexpensive, you dried your laundry by hanging it up outside, and there was just one TV. I bet one could still afford that lifestyle on today's average salary, no? It seems to me that we just want more stuff now.

AtlasBarfed 6y ago

My mom and stepdad used to work in the Bell Labs NJ building. Proper incentives would make that a perfect vertical farm facility IMO.

heavyset_go 6y ago
> Proper incentives would make that a perfect vertical farm facility IMO. Real estate values in the area makes farming a weird choice economically.

fmajid 6y ago

I’ve been to the Bell Labs Holmdel office in the 90s, and every single parking spot was taken, and with a mixed residential development it must be even more in demand. The article spouts a lot of trendy urban-planner ideology, trying to shoehorn facts into a predetermined narrative like hostility to cars. See this blog for why those policies are so misguided: http://ti.org/antiplanner/ http://ti.org/antiplanner/

rsync 6y ago

"People want space, and they also want to be able to visit areas of density, and walk around." From the cell wall to the terminals of a battery to the crossing of the bridge from cow hollow to the Marin Headlands ... energy and potential are found in distinct things that are held apart from one another.

billforsternz 6y ago
I googled the italicized part, but no, it seems you just conjured this up yourself. Nice work.
mountainboy 6y ago
also, Birkeland Currents in plasma (ionosphere and space)