The Makers March

摘要

Consolidation is the enemy of innovation. Don't believe me? Look at how, ahem, fast AT&T rolled out changes during its early heydays. Ma Bell - the colloquial name for the telecom monopoly - took three years of testing (!) before it rolled out touchtone phones (aided by the invention of low-cost transistors, which Bell also patented). That was 1963. And the rotary dial was still the norm when I grew up in the 1970s. It wasn't until the early '80s that we made the shift, and even then AT&T was still offering rotary for wall-mounted units.