this post was submitted on 17 Oct 2024
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I wasn’t saying Bell Labs wasn’t innovative. The “they” in that sentence was referring to average, non-tech consumers like my grandma. The monopoly AT&T had over the Bell System funded all that research and consumers paid higher rates and had worse service because it was a monopoly.
I’m not anti-research. I’m anti-monopoly.
I agree with almost all of it. Surely your grandmother or eldest living non-troglodyte relative has benefitted from transistors and calculators. Even lasers. Probably even Unix, if they use a Mac, as most tech-illiterate do.
However, the silver lining here is that this monopoly actually invested... heavily...into R&D. You don't see that now, not to the levels that they did.