Weekend Journal — The Other Direction of Trickle Down Techonomics
A few weeks ago I wrote about Trickle Down Technonomics, or more simply: how large investments in prior research can and do still affect us in the modern day. Since then, an article from the author of a forthcoming book on Bell Labs wrote an intriguing piece in the New York Times. I highly recommend checking it out. And while I haven’t changed my mind about the necessity of high-level research and investment, there was a glaring problem with the last post and my focus on high level: it’s not realistic these days. I’m not sure about the socio-political feed-ins that allowed raw research investment back then, aside from the specific example of AT&T’s glaring monopoly in the case of Bell Labs. What I do know is that research for the sake of research in a for-profit company seems to makes people (managers) more squeamish these days. Perhaps it was…