scipaBell Labs has no more fundamental physics research...
September 1st 2008 23:16
Without the transistor, there'd be no electronics, no computers, no Internet.
Sadly, this week, Bell Labs has killed off hopes of another transistor by axeing the fundamental physics research at the company.
"After six Nobel Prizes, the invention of the transistor, laser and countless contributions to computer science and technology, it is the end of the road for Bell Labs' fundamental physics research lab.
Alcatel-Lucent, the parent company of Bell Labs, is pulling out of basic science, material physics and semiconductor research and will instead be focusing on more immediately marketable areas such as networking, high-speed electronics, wireless, nanotechnology and software."
Alcatel-Lucent, the parent company of Bell Labs, is pulling out of basic science, material physics and semiconductor research and will instead be focusing on more immediately marketable areas such as networking, high-speed electronics, wireless, nanotechnology and software."
It's a sad day for American science... it used to be a given that the great companies of the day, IBM, Xerox and Bell, would fund blue sky research in the hope of making contributions to science.
Now that competition has gone global, and big companies have been splintered off into smaller ones, there isn't the drive to do fundamental research. No, companies are worried about their bottom line and pleasing stockholders, which means spending R&
money on directly commercial applications.This leaves research of this type solely in the hands of the university system, which has to beg for money from the government. Is this a good thing?
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