Shannon did a lot more than just information theory. In fact, anyone who fits the autonomy persona does because that was part of the definition.
Sure, licensing information theory is a bit of a stretch, but Shannon literally built one of the first artificial intelligence machines [1]. 2025 Shannon would've been totally fine building his own company.
If you see these idols through their singular achievements, then yes of course it's hard to imagine them outside the context of a lab, but rarely are these innovators one trick ponies.
By the way, Bob Metcalfe did indeed start his own company and became pretty successful in doing so.
Maybe the 2025 Bell Labs is the wider ecosystem of VCs and free floating innovators who end up starting startups instead of doing things in house.
I do think there is a lot less low hanging fruit which makes the comparison apples and oranges. Google is like Bell Labs today, and what did they invent? LLMs? Compare that to information theory, the transistor, Unix, etc.
I have no idea what Bell Labs was like on the inside, but the startups I've been involved in didn't leave a lot of room for experimentation, trying and failing.
Quite the opposite, always a mad rush towards profit at any cost.
> Sure, licensing information theory is a bit of a stretch, but Shannon literally built one of the first artificial intelligence machines [1]. 2025 Shannon would've been totally fine building his own company.
That almost seems like a problem! We shouldn't reward a prospective Claude Shannon for moving away from fundamental breakthroughs in favor of applied research that can go into a product. We're really failing to incentivize discovering fundamentals like information theory.
Sure, licensing information theory is a bit of a stretch, but Shannon literally built one of the first artificial intelligence machines [1]. 2025 Shannon would've been totally fine building his own company.
If you see these idols through their singular achievements, then yes of course it's hard to imagine them outside the context of a lab, but rarely are these innovators one trick ponies.
By the way, Bob Metcalfe did indeed start his own company and became pretty successful in doing so.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_Shannon#Artificial_Inte...