Company that keeps reinventing itself as a manufacturer

I spent many hours with that day, and I was delighted by his wry sense of humor and somewhat goofy smile; he had first worked in Corning’s Brazilian regional office as an optical communications specialist and had transferred to upstate New York about 15 years earlier. I could see that he loved his job.

 He’s helping to run the enormous centralized research lab—the Bell Labs of our era—for a company that keeps reinventing itself as a manufacturer and annually invests about 10 percent of its revenue, no matter what, in research and development.
fiber optics technician
Susan Crawford is the John A. Reilly Clinical Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, a columnist for WIRED, and author of the 2013 book Captive Audience. Crawford served as Special Assistant to the President for Science, Technology, and Innovation Policy (2009) and co-led the FCC transition team between the Bush and Obama administrations.

Mazzali brought me a cup of steaming coffee; as I drank, he said emphatically: “When you think about glass, some people say, ‘Oh, I get sand, and I melt that, and then I make glass.’ Of course it’s much more sophisticated than that for optical fiber. It’s totally different.”