The Perfect Innovation Storm & The Public Health Cost of Noise
What made Bell Labs a powerhouse of innovation at its peak? Also, important questions about the impact of industrial noise on public health.
Featured Articles
What Would It Take To Recreate Bell Labs?
What made Bell Labs a powerhouse of innovation at its peak? This piece explores the unique mix of historical and technological factors that fueled its success and why recreating that today seems nearly impossible. Its decline also suggests the need to rethink how to foster technological progress in today's landscape, which is very different from the one in which it operated.
Unfortunately, the conditions that made Bell Labs so successful were highly historically contingent and not the sort of thing that could be deliberately recreated. Being a subsidiary of a government-sanctioned, vertically integrated monopoly gave Bell Labs a broad research scope and freedom to pursue long-term research projects unavailable to most other industrial labs. Prior discoveries in quantum mechanics provided a wealth of new phenomena that Bell Labs could harvest for new technology, and WWII both pushed technology forward across the board and turned Bell Labs into an organization poised to capitalize on it. In the end, Bell Labs was ultimately undermined by the very technologies that it had created.
Published on Construction Physics
‘We’re Living in a Nightmare:’ Inside the Health Crisis of a Texas Bitcoin Town
In a small Texas town, residents are trying to deal with health issues they believe are linked to a nearby Bitcoin mining facility. As strange and debilitating symptoms arise, from vertigo to panic attacks, a local ENT specialist sheds light on the potential dangers of noise pollution from the mine. Even if you are not interested in cryptocurrency, this article raises important questions about the impact of industrial noise on public health.
As more machines were switched on, the noise sounded like a ceiling fan, then a leaf blower, then a jet engine. It consumed afternoon dog walks and revved through cloudless nights, vibrating the trailer homes of many of the low-income residents who live blocks from the facility.
Other Recommended Reading
Erica picked up a rock by chance 10 years ago. It might hold the oldest form of complex life on Earth
What could be more surprising than finding the oldest form of complex life on Earth in a small rock sitting on your desk? Dr. Erica Barlow's chance discovery of a 2.4 billion-year-old microfossil has rewritten the timeline of life's complexity on Earth, offering a glimpse into the mysteries of our planet's ancient past.
I recommend reading this one on your desktop browser; it is beautifully presented.
The sharp, one-time rise of oxygen has been theoretically linked to the development of all complex life on Earth, but we haven’t had the fossil record to demonstrate this theory – until now.
How Soon Might the Atlantic Ocean Break? Two Sibling Scientists Found an Answer—and Shook the World
What if the Atlantic Ocean’s currents were on the brink of collapse? This piece from Wired dives into the research of two sibling scientists who are tackling the complex question of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) and its potential tipping point. Their findings show the fragility of our climate systems and raise urgent questions about what the future may hold for our planet.
The AMOC transports a *staggering* amount of energy. Like a million nuclear power plants. It is such a core element of the Earth system that its collapse would radically alter regional weather patterns, the water cycle, the ability of every country to provide food for its inhabitants.
From the KKK to the state house: how neo-Nazi David Duke won office
This piece from The Guardian explores how David Duke cleverly tapped into the sentiments of a divided electorate despite his controversial (to say the least) past. It’s a thought-provoking read that prompts us to consider the implications of his legacy today. His rise decades ago highlighted issues in American politics and showed that his extremist views resonated more widely than most of us would like to believe.
On TV he could avoid the two great enemies of demagogues: context and memory. If questioned too sharply, he could just play the victim. Here was this nice-looking, clean-cut guy being badgered by some snooty journalist. He always got his message across, one way or another: “I just think white people should have equal rights, too.” Now what was so unreasonable sounding about that?
Ill-Suited to Reality
This “book review” reads more like an independent essay, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. The author explores the complexities of NATO's history and its evolving role from the Cold War to the present day. There is a challenge to the narrative of NATO as a purely benign alliance, demonstrating the political motivations and covert operations that have shaped its actions. I would recommend this as a good starting point if you are interested in learning more about NATO.
It has suddenly become popular to cast Nato as the first benign military alliance in history, without concealed politics of any kind. But that is to erase some uncomfortable facts. The most egregious cases of international aggression since the founding of the alliance have all involved the US: Korea, Vietnam, the First Gulf War, Afghanistan, Iraq.
