Articles like this always tend to overlook the fact that Bell Labs wasn’t unique in its time. And other companies had very similar labs running. A famous example is Xerox Labs which invented the computer mouse and graphical windowing, among other things.

Google had this vibe too, prior to going public.

Missing context here is that Bell labs was at its most productive when it was a government backed monopoly, with the govt insisting that it work in the general public benefit. It’s not possible now because that sort of public-private symbiosis has totally fallen out of favour and regulators just don’t really have the teeth to grab the bull by the horns like that anymore.

Just use what Bell had before: a monopoly on virtually all communication to pay for crazy ideas and irregular output. Also, stomp out all competition so no one else can make any discoveries of their own. Can’t have rivals muddying the history of who invented what.

And, yet, in that time, consumers paid more for telecommunication services and basically the main innovations they got were touchtone phones replacing rotary ones and higher bills. Bell Labs being a success story doesn’t mean Ma Bell shouldn’t have been broken up.

If consumers are paying extra to a monopoly anyway, just fund university labs and non-university research agencies (which we do). We have dozens of equivalents to Bell Labs. There’s no reason to rely on monopolists for innovation.

The importance of basic research…

A breakthrough in physics that enables a new technology to have all the benefits and zero downsides of our current globally deployed communication standards. Like true wireless energy, or something that can replace undersea cables.