Happy anniversary, Alexander Graham Bell. What have we learned in 150 years?

March 10, 2026, marks the 150th anniversary of Alexander Graham Bell’s first telephone call. His words—“Mr. Watson, come here; I want to see you.”—were simple but launched a revolution in human connectivity. Ninety-three years later, another revolution began with a far less dramatic message. On Oct. 29, 1969, researchers attempting the first ARPANET connection between UCLA and Stanford tried to type the word “login.” The system crashed after the first two letters, so the first message ever sent across what would become the internet was simply “Lo.” Those two moments—Bell’s call and ARPANET’s stutter—bookend a critical lesson for the AI era. Each communications revolution builds on the last, but each creates its own economic logic and governance challenges. Policy mistakes happen when we assume the future will behave like the past.