Broadband ISP Photos → The Hello Machine.

»youtu.be/K_q_k_QDraQ

I always wonder what AT&T would be like today if they were not broken up. They did accomplish some neat stuff.

The guy at the beginning of the video seems a little too excited.

I must have watched just about all of these videos. Theres some really cool stuff in there.

Its a shame things are the way they are today. :-(

Ma Bell once was on the forefront of innovation.

I love that old teletype that prints on paper. Brings new meaning to printf.

Its a real shame the got broken up it probably set back technological progress 5-10 years.

Long Lines was such a miraculous achievement for the primitive technology they had at their disposal so was the transistor and growing crystal oscillators.

We wouldn't have had unix or most modern computing concepts without them.

Heck they even discovered cosmic radiation.

Bell Labs and Nortel both envisioned the future then built it.

edit: The break up also happened at probably the worst time it could have with how much computers had improved.

edit: AT&T labs (Bell Labs), Nortel (Bell Labs Northern research) IBM and Digital Equipment Corporation and Xerox Parc pretty much invented everything that led to today's technology. Everything since then has just improvements made to inventions they created.

Something of immeasurable value was lost when these organizations all went under or changed directions.

We would all have fiber by now in fact bell labs invented it.

Unfortunately now we're stuck with mega corporations that care about nothing other than their bottom line.

If an innovation isn't going to improve their bottom line... it will never see the light of day.

Exactly.

A couple of dominant players can overshadow the smaller guys and drown them out to a degree. They can also stifle those smaller players as we've all seen.

Eventually the truth will get out, and we see it with things like Google Fiber.

It is only through competition that the bar is raised. Left to their own vices, people and corporations will get comfortable and be very unlikely to push for greater things.

It's not just the dominate mega corporations that try to drown out the smaller guys. Local government is often hell bent on running them into the ground too. Google is making waves to motivate the big players but they are doing just as much harm to the little guy as the incumbent and muni networks are.