Bell Labs and Changing the World

Bell Labs should hold a special place in our hearts. I know that its remains nowadays lie deep in the bowels of Nokia; a company which itself owns a special place in the heart of many who experienced the early days of mobile phones (cell phones, for our American readers). The Nokia 3310, anyone? I also know that Bell Labs is intricately linked with AT&T, itself now a pretty standard mobile company. But in its heyday, Bell Labs was the place to be. Its legacy, world renowned.

There’s a great book by Jon Gertner, The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation, which provides a history of Bell Labs. Ben Southwood at Works In Progress wrote a great article on industrial R&D. There’s often a quest to rekindle the spirit and create a new Bell Labs. Noah Smith wrote an excellent article on it. But I’m not sure we need to recreate Bell Labs. In fact, I don’t think we should ever aim to recreate anything. Instead, we should create new. Technology research has never been better, but it has changed since the days of Bell Labs.

Bell Labs was responsible for some of the most important inventions and discoveries in history, including (take a deep breath): the foundations of radio astronomy in 1931; the first complex number calculator in 1939; the transistor (one of the most important scientific inventions ever) in 1947; the foundations of information theory, in 1948; the development of the first modern solar PV cell, in 1954; the charge-coupled device, in 1969; contributions to the development of Unix, also in 1969; and the development of C programming language, in 1972, as well as a host of other programming languages.

Looking at that list, it is remarkable how throughout the 20th century, Bell Labs transitioned (ho ho ho) from basic physics research, understanding things like radiowaves, to computer science research (programming languages).

The fantastic accumulation of talent was able to combine to change the world, unrivalled at the time, except perhaps at Los Alamos and the Manhattan Project, who also changed the world but in a very different way. Without the transistor, without the Unix operating system and without information theory, we’d be much poorer. That’s why the ethereal desire to recreate Bell Labs is understandable; but it’s ultimately unnecessary.

Firstly, the (industrial) research lab is not dead! We have many industrial research labs, and you have heard of the big ones - Google DeepMind, OpenAI and Microsoft Research. Then you’ve got companies whereby R&D is an absolute necessity of their business model - pharma is the prime example. I know nothing about drugs (honest, guv), so I can’t write any more on that.

We’ve got government research too. In 2021, the UK government announced the creation of the Advanced Research & Invention Agency (ARIA), which you know will be good because it has the word “advanced” in it. It’s a bit like the USA’s DARPA. We’ve also got things like CERN and SLAC. And then we’ve got universities. Apparently, universities are not all about going on pub crawls and getting drunk! Who knew?

I don’t think we should particularly care where ideas come from as long as we’re developing new tech that improves the world. Though you need someone with deep pockets to fund it.

Secondly, the nature of industrial research has changed. It no longer focuses, in most cases, on things like fundamental physics or pure maths. It doesn’t need to. The world has got more complex, and we now understand much of the fundamental aspects of physics, biology, chemistry and pure maths. The “easy” wins in these fields have long since gone. If you want to know what’s left look at the Millennium Prize Problems.

Thirdly, and probably most importantly, there’s a tonne of innovation and research. The current approach is to take existing technology and develop further applications everywhere in the world, across every industry. The Silicon Valley model of the 21st century is where software and consumer technology tramples through different industries like an economic blitz. The tech giants are now more akin to the Korean chaebols or Japanese zaibatsus.

In 2012, Amazon bought Kiva Systems, a provider of warehouse robotics, and along with Amazon Science and the rest of the supply chain and logistics might of Amazon, set about creating a fully autonomous warehouse (I simply refuse to use the term “fulfilment centre”; it’s a warehouse). In thirty years, it’s probably unlikely that someone will write a book, The Idea Factory: Amazon Fulfilment Centres and the Great Age of Warehouse Innovation, but what Amazon does to supply chains (along with others) is a modern day equivalent of what Bell Labs did for phone and radio communication.

More specifically, deep tech research does exist - in spades. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, which by my reckoning is probably the world’s most important company right now, manufactures 84% of the world’s most efficient (advanced) chips. SpaceX, which by my reckoning is the company with the most potential in the world right now, delivers two times as much payload to orbit as the rest of the world combined. These deep tech companies contribute vast resources to R&D (TSMC spent $4.4bn on R&D, equivalent to 7.7% of revenue in 2021). Then there are the driverless car and nuclear fusion startups; deep tech startups are all the rage!

Like everything, as time passes, technology evolves, which means our technology research evolves. The best example to demonstrate this is the Deutsches Technikmuseum in Berlin, which beautifully shows tech innovation through time. As Hans Rosling said, the world is getting remarkably better.

Let’s raise a glass to Bell Labs for all it did, but let’s go to bed at night knowing that industrial research is in good health. So, no, we don’t need a new Bell Labs. We’re doing just fine, thanks.

Thanks for reading, I’ll see you next time!