(The Picturephone in 1964 - courtesy AT&T Archives)

NYTimes recently published an opinion piece on “True Innovation” by Jon Gertner who has an upcoming book on Bell Labs. I have mixed feelings about the piece.

I agree that Bell Labs was great and today’s media/entrepreneurs/VCs seem to be obsessed with end-user applications that have nothing to do with “hard sciences” or true innovation (scientific breakthroughs, fundamental advances in technology). 

On the other hand, I don’t think it’s possible to create a Bell Labs today. It was funded by a monopoly and the closest thing to it can be a R&D lab of a tech giant with enough money to spare. I think Jon was better off not comparing Bell Labs to the Silicon Valley: a better question could have been that how can national funding agencies, research labs, and universities better enable long-term innovation in “hard sciences” like Bell Labs did. While I completely agree that the term “innovative” has lost its meaning lately with every stupid simple mobile app getting labeled as one, but the fact remains that it’s not the goal of profit-seeking entrepreneurs to enable the kind of innovation that he is talking about.

I love this work by Stephen Wilkes, where you can see the city going from day to night in the same shot. Stephen spent hours taking hundreds of shots to create each one these pieces. The above view of Washington Square is almost what you’d see from the Bobst Library at NYU. You can view more here.