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- Music by Fran Blanche -
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It’s worse than shortsightedness; it’s our Military industrial complex. That’s the only place that truly open research is happening. They’ve got exotic tools and inputs at their disposal. The results are classified. The public scientific community is now lagging behind by about 30 years. With university academics fighting to prop up their own ideas instead of discover truth, our society may never make up that gap. Not without a large theatrical event.
Hypertext was invented in CERN mind you…
Indeed they used to throw food as even transmitter schematics in the fish bowl and then sit on the top of it searching for the goldfish. The same today. Only today there is no goldfish anymore. Only piranchas…. dressed in gold.!!
I suspect that the participants here will enjoy the movie "The Pirates of Silicon Valley".
Management is a a fundamental problem with the west these days, whether it be company management or government. They are packed with ignorant yes person clones who don't understand the fundamentals of the business in the way that they should. It is all about the immediate future of at most a couple of years and not planning for the medium or long term. They want their bonuses now, not given to their grandkids in 20yrs time.
Thanks for the thoughts to think;)
Great video, Fran! Amazing insight into the mistake the corporations made, in interpreting the mistake as having wasted money, instead of realizing that their mistake was not valuing their employee's inventions.
But I disagree it will never be repeated; at some point in the future there will be some sort of societal or economic collapse, and the age of rebuilding might include the New Age of Crazy Dreamers.
FYI, Apple gave about $10K worth of Apple stock to Xerox as a licensing for using the GUI and stuff. Xerox didn't want anything to do with it so they quickly sold it (today that amount of stock would probably be worth a few tens of millions or hundreds of millions of dollars). So Jobs didn't quite "take" from Xerox – they did offer compensation for it. Though it was mostly demonstrations of ideas – things like overlapping windows were actually created by Wozniak who didn't know the Alto didn't support things like that.
One also needs to understand that the pure research happened because companies were flush with cash because they could overcharge everyone. Bell Labs was funded by AT&T who was given a government monopoly on long distance calling. Perhaps you might remember when a long distance call cost dollars a minute, and that money was guaranteed to AT&T who then spent it funding research. These days, long distance is practically free – you can call across the USA for free nowadays, and calling overseas is pennies per minute.
Likewise, Xerox charged a lot for their photocopiers, and the Alto itself cost 5 digits back then – something you rarely see in a computer you get today (oh, you can configure a $20,000 PC today, but you generally don't have to). Kodak did a lot of it too, funded by everyone buying Kodak moments. As did IBM, funded by a virtual monopoly on business equipment like typewriters and computers that were purchased by the minute.
These days, margins are much smaller so any money is dedicated to improving the bottom line. But as a result, things are a lot cheaper. You could say flying in the past was a lot better, but a plane ticket also cost a lot more money. I guess you could say back in the past, companies had more money than they knew what to do with and they spent it freely. But these days the quest for lower prices (I'm sure you'll agree life is better with cheap or free long distance, cheap plane tickets, cheap computers and consumer electronics, etc) means companies have to be smarter about spending money. Microsoft still has a pure research division (Microsoft Research), but then again, it's probably cut down now that things like cloud, Linux and other things happened. So really – did you want to go back to the past where your TV cost you a couple of year's disposable income but that extra money produced pure research, or these days where things cost less (even with inflation) but do way more?
Alot of great discovery and invention, die off due to impact and effectiveness affecting the whole industry, example:
Royal Raymond Rife developed the Rife machine in the 1920s.
Dr. Tullio Simoncini known for claims that cancer can be cured with known for his claim baking soda (sodium bicarbonate) fight cancer.
Another is a US inventor 50s ~ 70s, (can't find his video on YouTube now) who invented a magnetic suspension bed, that would last for 100 years, but no manufacturer wanted something like that.
Only about money now!
I really enjoyed the book The Idea Factory about Bell Labs history. Oh to be a fly on the wall during that time (or to have a time machine). Exciting times.
What PARC didn't seem to think of is a reasonable price for Star and also even Steve Jobs for the Lisa.
Great Video! True, Yesterday's research for "research sake" is gone, devolving into patent trolls and classified programs. However, many research institutions such as Bell Labs only appeared privately funded. Bell Labs parent company was Western Electric a Division of ATT which held many federal contracts making the "dreamers" research possible. NASA and the Apollo programs were another example of technological innovation driven by the engine of national security after sputnik; while simultaneously portrayed to the public as a peaceful research body designed for space exploration.
Today the landscape is different. Our government is less than forthcoming with new discoveries because the technological gap between partners has closed. In addition We shouldn't underestimate the power corporate espionage and Intellectual Property theft from hostile foreign actors which complicates the process. The missing hard drives from the X Division of the Los Alamos national laboratory, which contained our classified response to Nuclear attack underscores the difficulty agencies face in properly screening candidates for research positions in sensitive areas.
In the corporate environment NDA Non Disclosure Agreement's restrict the free flow of scientific inquiry, while foreign investment in our research institutions pose a national security risk. A deceased engineer who worked on the F14 Tomcat program confided. "all of our work was compartmentalized, no one discussed what we or the other teams were doing" and his other memorable quote " If you want to understand the possibilities of America's technology, look to what is flying. Now add 20 years to the formula; are the classified programs are currently being tested, if you add twenty years more – is what's on the engineers table"
I miss that way so much Fran. Working together not alone like being under a rock.
I was one of those curious kids who had the privilege of tinkering for tinkering’s sake. It was remarkably full of liked minded curious folks. After working in typical product oriented companies, I got a shot Bellcore. It was the research lab of the regional Bells. Money was truly no object. I felt guilty getting paid to work in the candy store.
Blame the bean counters, MBAs & investment banker. Must have profits today, it's somebody else's problem tomorrow