this is where Google Labs went when it was "cut"
not sure if you're being serious, but no, google labs was a bunch of experimental projects run by normal google software engineers. this is an entirely separate thing.
At Google X, a Top-Secret Lab Dreaming Up the Future
11–20 of 98 posts
Re: At Google X, a Top-Secret Lab Dreaming Up the Future
#12There have been times in my life where I've thought that I've had a "genius" idea and every cell in my body has said "Don't tell anyone. Hoard it. Cultivate it. And you'll be a revolutionary!" And then I end up sharing. And there never ceases to be one or two or four perspectives shared that I never thought of before. And in the end, I think the idea flourishes because I was open and shared and iterated and shared th…
PARC gave the world Graphical User Interfaces, object oriented programming, ethernet, laser printers, precursors to PostScript, and a few other major breakthroughs.
It wasn't necessarily a "secret lab", but its distance from XEROX management on the east coast made it effectively an under the radar operation (to their detriment, of course)
Re: At Google X, a Top-Secret Lab Dreaming Up the Future
#13I think what Google's best at is not so much innovation as taking existing innovations typically reserved for Dept. of Defense/B2B uses and bringing it to consumers for free. We already know the DoD already has tech that is years ahead. Google is one of the few companies who can not only afford to bring crazy breakthroughs like Google Street but to do so in a financially profitable or feasible manner.
I disagree that dod has the best tech already in "top secret". The best tech is often dod sponsored, but is made public by the university researchers who usually create it. And it's not costly, you can go read it and use it, often the stuff is released as open source software on the researchers' website.
I think we'd be surprised to see some of the things that might be in the bowels of, say, Sandia.
Re: At Google X, a Top-Secret Lab Dreaming Up the Future
#14There have been times in my life where I've thought that I've had a "genius" idea and every cell in my body has said "Don't tell anyone. Hoard it. Cultivate it. And you'll be a revolutionary!" And then I end up sharing. And there never ceases to be one or two or four perspectives shared that I never thought of before. And in the end, I think the idea flourishes because I was open and shared and iterated and shared th…
I'd assume that it depends on the "top secret" -ness of the lab. In a large enough top secret lab, there is a diverse enough set of perspectives to still provide the sharing culture that ideas need to flourish.
In a right-sized enough top secret lab, you can keep the "that's just too crazy, it'll never work" attitude out, while affording the isolation from real-world concerns necessary for "too crazy" to become "just crazy enough".
Re: At Google X, a Top-Secret Lab Dreaming Up the Future
#15I think what Google's best at is not so much innovation as taking existing innovations typically reserved for Dept. of Defense/B2B uses and bringing it to consumers for free. We already know the DoD already has tech that is years ahead. Google is one of the few companies who can not only afford to bring crazy breakthroughs like Google Street but to do so in a financially profitable or feasible manner.
I disagree that dod has the best tech already in "top secret". The best tech is often dod sponsored, but is made public by the university researchers who usually create it. And it's not costly, you can go read it and use it, often the stuff is released as open source software on the researchers' website.
"But is made public by the university researchers who usually create it" <-- yeah, the stuff you know about is made public, and the stuff you don't.... isn't. That's what secret means. I think I heard that 50% of the research in Neuroscience labs today is DoD sponsored and never sees the light of day. Mind-hacking anyone?
Re: At Google X, a Top-Secret Lab Dreaming Up the Future
#16Earlier quoted context omitted.
I disagree that dod has the best tech already in "top secret". The best tech is often dod sponsored, but is made public by the university researchers who usually create it. And it's not costly, you can go read it and use it, often the stuff is released as open source software on the researchers' website.
I think we'd be surprised to see some of the things that might be in the bowels of, say, Sandia.
I used to think they were all special
genius places, until i see that it's
not their people winning publicly open
challenges like netflix, darpa grand challenge,
x prize, or goldfarb.
Re: At Google X, a Top-Secret Lab Dreaming Up the Future
#17"It’s a place where your refrigerator could be connected to the Internet, so it could order groceries when they ran low. Your dinner plate could post to a social network what you’re eating. [...] These are just a few of the dreams being chased at Google X, the clandestine lab where Google is tackling a list of 100 shoot-for-the-stars ideas. " Those are shoot-for-the-stars ideas? I hope those are at the lowest end of…
I've been hearing talk of self-restocking fridges for at least 10 years. It's the ultimate go-to cliche for the "connected devices" hype, that's now called the "internet of things."
It's the modern-day version of the Honeywell H316 Kitchen Computer: http://jdh.oxfordjournals.org/content/23/2/163/F9.large.jpg
Re: At Google X, a Top-Secret Lab Dreaming Up the Future
#18I think what Google's best at is not so much innovation as taking existing innovations typically reserved for Dept. of Defense/B2B uses and bringing it to consumers for free. We already know the DoD already has tech that is years ahead. Google is one of the few companies who can not only afford to bring crazy breakthroughs like Google Street but to do so in a financially profitable or feasible manner.
I disagree that dod has the best tech already in "top secret". The best tech is often dod sponsored, but is made public by the university researchers who usually create it. And it's not costly, you can go read it and use it, often the stuff is released as open source software on the researchers' website.
We're not aware of what they have that's considered classified. Back in the 70s, a former prof of mine was doing his phd. He was trying to figure stuff out and couldn't. Through one turn or another, he said the DoD told him, "OK, kid, come over here, we'll help yo out." He got classified access to see stuff that blew his mind and helped him get going.
The point is that back then, at least one guy's experience was that the military helped the university researchers, not the other way around. When I look at some of the capabilities in military hardware today, I wouldn't doubt that the DoD is still way up there. Certainly, a lot of medical innovations (as one example) are still made on the battlefield first, even today.
Re: At Google X, a Top-Secret Lab Dreaming Up the Future
#19There have been times in my life where I've thought that I've had a "genius" idea and every cell in my body has said "Don't tell anyone. Hoard it. Cultivate it. And you'll be a revolutionary!" And then I end up sharing. And there never ceases to be one or two or four perspectives shared that I never thought of before. And in the end, I think the idea flourishes because I was open and shared and iterated and shared th…
> Do these "top secret" labs ever make the big cognitive leaps that we hope for?
Clifford Cocks discovered public key cryptography years before RSA, while he was working for Government Communications Head Quarter (GCHQ) which is an environment with (especially at the time he did it) a lot of secrecy, both from workers to the outside world but also amongst workers internally.
Who knows what else they've discovered that has not yet been released?
Re: At Google X, a Top-Secret Lab Dreaming Up the Future
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
I disagree that dod has the best tech already in "top secret". The best tech is often dod sponsored, but is made public by the university researchers who usually create it. And it's not costly, you can go read it and use it, often the stuff is released as open source software on the researchers' website.
"But is made public by the university researchers who usually create it" <-- yeah, the stuff you know about is made public, and the stuff you don't.... isn't. That's what secret means. I think I heard that 50% of the research in Neuroscience labs today is DoD sponsored and never sees the light of day. Mind-hacking anyone?
Tech that could be applied to civilians
and made money on doesn't stay hidden for
long - this is one place where the
"greedy" mba types are the good guys.