August 5, 2025
In the early days of the Internet, I was helping my friend Steve Jones do research on a book that grew to be “The Internet for Educators and Homeschoolers.”
One of the things that came out back then was all the ways groups were trying to solve “last mile” problems, and in the book, we talked about the electric utility in Glasgow, KY. This utility company got into the internet business by using their rights-of-way to drop broadband lines to provide Internet to their customers. It was brilliant, and around this same time, Qwest Communications did something similar but BIGGER: they were a spin-off (sorta) from Southern Pacific (yes, that Southern Pacific), which bought access to the train rights-of-way and began laying fiber-optic cable alongside.
Remember: it was the dot-com boom, and every company was potentially an Internet company.
Neal Stephenson (yes, that Neal Stephenson) wrote a really cool piece in WIRED magazine about the wiring of the world not long after, describing how Qwest used special flatbed train cars with a plow mounted alongside to open up a trench, then spool out the cable, and at the end of the car was a reverse plow, to cover the trench. This special train poked along the American West, increasing the amount of fiber exponentially.
Both of these stories resonated with me, the business major, and illustrated all over again how innovation doesn’t often come from the dominant players, in this case the Telcos. AT&T and the Baby Bells didn’t have any incentive to kill off their cash cows: all those miles and miles of copper that they’d put everywhere since the 1920s. Which is why you had DSL products everywhere in the early 2000s. You gotta make that copper pay.
At around the same time, I ran across a fascinating piece about the William Chamberlen family, a group of Huguenot refugees in France who left for England after the St. Bartolemew’s Massacre of 1572. The Chamberlens (start around Page 4 in this article on medical history) had as their family business the old medieval “barber/doctor,” which some of you may remember from Steve Martin on SNL: Theodoric of York: Medieval Barber.
Their intellectual property was the obstetric forceps, which they treated as a family monopoly for over 150 YEARS: helping royals and elites have healthy babies and doing it under high security and secrecy. The mothers were blindfolded, the tools were kept under lock and key, and everyone but the doctors and the patient were ejected from the birthing chamber.
The lore is that a disgruntled medical student who wanted to study with the Chamberlens sneaked up onto the roof, and observed the instrument in use from a window, but it’s hard to say if that’s true. The Chamberlens themselves tried to secretly sell the technology to the highest bidder many times, particularly after the last of their line was childless.
The point is that often, the best innovations are not made into products, or take much longer to adopt than they should.
In the tech world, the old adage “no one got fired by buying IBM” was true. Established players or ways of thinking dominate way after their expiration dates get close.
Which is why I’m such a believer in Virtual Desktops…
Like so many established technologies, it’s hard to get folks to consider alternatives. Even ones that save tons of money.
Since building operation has been in my wheelhouse, one of the other windmills I tilt at is Thermal Comfort Principles in architecture. THAT is a topic for another day. Maybe several.
As I say often, it’s not for everyone. If you’re a digital nomad or work in sales, a laptop and various personal tech devices remain your best bet. But if every day you come to your office, sign in to your computer and remain tethered for most of your work day, there are definite cost benefits to not spending $400–$1,200 every 5 years.
