Alcatel

When do we get some good news? Alcatel announced yesterday the buy out of Lucent Technologies for 12.2 billion Cdn. Lucent has been an orphan since it was spun off by the Baby Bells at the time of the breakup. Lucent, once Bell Labs over the years has been responsible for more high tech patents than nearly any body else. Only IBM matches Lucent’s productivity. Score another one for giant multinationals. Morn the loss of technological capacity for our phone companies, and their ever figuring out how to light up their hoard of dark fiber, or their bean counters ever having the desire. It is enough that Japan and Korea lead us in information access; we now add France to the list. Free Wi-Fi lights the Paris subways already. Their’s is a better sense of egality, but what a crushing loss of scientific knowledge for America.