"Bell Labs, the historic headwaters of so many inventions that now
  define our digital age, is closing in Murray Hill," writes journalism
  professor Jeff Jarvis (in an [1]op-ed for New Jersey's Star-Ledger
  newspaper).

  "The Labs should be preserved as a historic site and more." I propose
  that Bell Labs be opened to the public as a museum and school of the
  internet.

  The internet would not be possible without the technologies forged at
  Bell Labs: the transistor, the laser, information theory, Unix,
  communications satellites, fiber optics, advances in chip design,
  cellular phones, compression, microphones, talkies, the first digital
  art, and artificial intelligence — not to mention, of course, many
  advances in networks and the telephone, including the precursor to the
  device we all carry and communicate with today: the Picturephone,
  displayed as a futuristic fantasy at the 1964 World's Fair.

  There is no museum of the internet. Silicon Valley has its [2]Computer
  History Museum. New York has museums for [3]television and the
  [4]moving image. Massachusetts boasts a charming [5]Museum of Printing.
  Search Google for a museum of the internet and you'll find [6]amusing
  digital artifacts, but nowhere to immerse oneself in and study this
  immensely impactful institution in society.

  Where better to house a museum devoted to the internet than New Jersey,
  home not only of Bell Labs but also at one time the headquarters of the
  communications empire, AT&T, our Ma Bell...? The old Bell Labs could be
  more than a museum, preserving and explaining the advances that led to
  the internet. It could be a school... Imagine if Bell Labs were a place
  where scholars and students in many disciplines — technologies, yes,
  but also anthropology, sociology, psychology, history, ethics,
  economics, community studies, design — could gather to teach and learn,
  discuss and research.
  The text of Jarvis's piece is behind [7]subscription walls, but has
  apparently been [8]re-published on X by innovation theorist John Nosta.

  In one of the most interesting passages, Jarvis remembers visiting Bell
  Labs in 1995. "The halls were haunted with genius: lab after lab with
  benches and blackboards and history within. We must not lose that
  history."

References

  1. https://medium.com/whither-news/make-bell-labs-an-internet-museum-8c61a90e1afe
  2. https://computerhistory.org/
  3. https://www.paleycenter.org/
  4. https://movingimage.org/
  5. https://museumofprinting.org/
  6. https://m.facebook.com/profile.php/?id=100068646708657
  7. https://www.nj.com/opinion/2024/01/save-the-old-bell-labs-as-a-new-museum-of-the-internet.html
  8. https://twitter.com/JohnNosta/status/1747356169746743788

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