There was a movement by AT&T to block research and implementation of internet or have you forgotten. In fact they wanted the infrastructure done their way not decentralized, etc. Than there was FIdonet, etc.
The problem with counterfactual history is that history is nonlinear: The things which do happen affect the things that don't. In particular, it is very hard to write the future history of things that were squelched by larger forces before they could grow big. Squelched things are obscure. They are hard to research.
It's hard enough to write an actual early history of, say, Apple -- much of it was witnessed only by a handful of people, and memory is fallible, and lots of traditions have obscure beginnings -- but how do you write the future history of the company that Steve Jobs would have started if Woz had decided to remain at H-P? It's like trying to predict hurricanes by tracking all the butterflies.
Look, by being here you should understand one basic thing: What big companies do doesn't matter in terms of what society wants done. Successful companies ride the wave of society, not dictate. Dictators don't last. Any AT&T interference wouldn't have mattered. It's like saying IBM could have stopped personal computing.
