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Eric Gilliam's "How did places like Bell Labs know how to ask the right questions?" https://www.freaktakes.com/p/how-did-places-like-bell-labs-know https://www.
by leoc 1y ago
Eric Gilliam's "How did places like Bell Labs know how to ask the right questions?" https://www.freaktakes.com/p/how-did-places-like-bell-labs-know https://www.freaktakes.com/p/how-did-places-like-bell-labs-k... came to a similar conclusion. (It did well here just a couple of months ago, too https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43295865 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43295865 , so it is a little disappointing that the discussion seems to be starting from the beginning here again.) Another point which you've both made is that other big US firms had very important industrial research labs, too. (RCA Labs is one that seems to get little love these days, at least outside the pages of We Were Burning https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/bob-johnstone/we-were-burning/9780465091188/ https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/bob-johnstone/we-we... Also, to be fair, "Areoform" did mention Xerox PARC once in TFA.) Indeed, overstating the uniqueness of Bell Labs helps to billow up the clouds of mystique, but it's probably harmful to a clear understanding of how it actually worked.
But the ultimate problem with TFA is that it seems to be written to portray venture capitalists(?), or at least this group of VCs who totally get it, as on the side of real innovation along with ... Bell Labs researchers(?) and Bell Labs executives(?) ... against the Permanent Managerial Class which has ruined everything. Such ideas have apparently been popular for a while, but I think we can agree that after the past year or two the joke isn't as funny as it used to be anymore.
- smj-edison 1y agoJust read that article you mentioned--I find the most interesting part of it is "system integrators," or those who intentionally pay attention to both the research going on, and the on-the-ground problems. It's fascinating how it mentions how they brought information back and forth, and even generated new ideas from all the connections they formed.
- whatever1 1y agoExxonMobil also closed this year the NJ based prolific Corporate Strategic Research center that among many chemical process related breakthroughs, identified the CO2 emissions risks (way before academia), and invented the lithium battery.
- ab5tract 1y agoCO2 emissions risks were already being discussed in the 1800s. Furthermore, Big Oil notoriously suppressed any hint of their internal climate change models from being published and hired the same marketing firms that Big Tobacco employed.
- BoxOfRain 1y agoIt really pains me that the people involved in this cover-up likely led lives of absurd luxury rather than seeing the meanest hint of justice for what they did. People talk about climate change as though we're all equally responsible but this is false, there may be few saints on this subject but there's certainly degrees of sinner and these people are at the very highest level of blame in my opinion. How much of the world will be uninhabitable by the end of the century due to their lies delaying timely climate action?
- JohnMakin 1y agoThere's a reason the wealthiest are building bunkers on private islands. The populace by-at-large remains blissfully unaware of the current consequences of climate change or what is almost certainly coming in the next several decades - when a critical mass realizes what has happened, the brother of mario kind of violence we witnessed this year will probably become commonplace. I don't see it playing out any other way, the level of current climate denial and gaslighting (even among supposed climate activists) cannot avoid reality forever.
- genewitch 1y agoDo you know of any literature that shows it being discussed in earnest before ~1905, which is when the newspaper article about it I've read was published?
- LargoLasskhyfv 1y ago1896 at least: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svante_Arrhenius#Greenhouse_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svante_Arrhenius#Greenhouse_ef...