4 ms·
A more appropriate question. Why did Bell Labs die? Why don't they pump out as much innovation today as they did in the past?
by max_ 1y ago
A more appropriate question.
Why did Bell Labs die?
Why don't they pump out as much innovation today as they did in the past?
- wpm 1y ago1. They don't exist. No, "Nokia Bell Labs" is not the same. Lucent is not the same. 2. Bell Telephone doesn't exist. No, AT&T is not the same. 3. Since Bell Telephone doesn't exist, the money faucet doesn't exist to pay for Bell Labs. 4. See 1.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- matthewdgreen 1y agoDon't forget much higher tax rates on corporate profit, combined with big R&D tax credits. Most of this went away when tax rates were lowered in the 1980s, and the focus shifted to delivering profits back to shareholders.
- marsten 1y agoThe standard answer is that the US government broke up Ma Bell in the early 1980s to encourage competition. Hence the quid pro quo that had existed for decades – you let us have a monopoly, we'll do research in the public interest – vanished. In short the fact that you can now make free long distance calls is why Bell Labs died. I wonder if we'll see a similar change now that the DOJ is going after Google for antitrust violations. Google has been very open about publishing many of their innovations (like the Transformer architecture), not to mention DeepMind's work e.g. the protein folding work that got a Nobel prize.