I feel like if Google was in charge of Bell Labs, they would have cancelled the transistor project because it wouldn’t make as much money in six months as punch card machines

Unix? Shut it down. Why do we need an internal operating system? That doesn’t make us any money.

There’s radiation coming from the stars? Sounds interesting. But get back to making punchcards. If we can’t monetise radio astronomy, then there’s no point.

You focused light to create a tight beam by stimulating emission? And how does that help us make telephones? It doesn’t? Then forget about it.

There’s so many more moonshot ideas that came from Bell Labs, like the concept of CCDs, PV cells, calculators, etc

It is actually incredible what you can do when you give a bunch of smart people time, space, freedom, and the ability to be creative

I mean, they invented the transistor. You can’t get any more moonshot than that.

@yassie_j @mastodonmigration You’re so right. And not just Google. Bell Labs was unique. There wasn’t even a “transistor project”—just some talented physicists allowed to do whatever they wanted, for years. This hasn’t existed since.

Of course, they had the luxury of a monopoly far more solid and lucrative (relatively speaking) than Google’s.

@yassie_j > There’s so many more moonshot ideas that came from Bell Labs, like the concept of CCDs, PV cells, calculators, etc

There were others who also invented those things or conceived of them. Bell Labs pumped money into making them practical products but nothing suggests no one else could have.

Calculators in particular had a fairly rich ecosystem.

@yassie_j funnily enough they apparently did axe their next operating system called fuchsia outside of embedded junk

@halva @yassie_j Oh, RIP fuchsia.

Fixing Android's hilarious security problems? Nah, don't need to, they buy it anyway.

@halva @yassie_j I thought fuchsia was always meant to be a greenfield experiment? they did get android to work on it at some point which was pretty cool

@yassie_j@labyrinth.zone also C and Unix probably ​​

@CrebboElodie @yassie_j The world saved, instead we get Oberon and Lisp.

@yassie_j At IBM early AS/400 development was guised as a punch card sorter (iirc) because mgmnt didn't want to finance another computer project (aside of mainframe) and "it is easier to apologise than to get permission"

@yassie_j

And yet they are willing to waste billions on pointless "AI" projects.

"everyone else is doing it" and they have to keep their shareholders happy with the latest computing fad 🤨🤦‍♂️