Google Glass vs. The USA's R&D Toilet
http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/001086.html
If you're a regular consumer of the computer industry trade press -- a
strong stomach strongly recommended -- you've probably seen a bit of
gloating lately about Google pulling their Google Glass device from
most consumer marketing.
Mainstream media has picked up the drumbeat too, with even major
publications like "The New York Times" very recently running
stories purporting to explain why Google Glass has "failed" or how
this is emblematic of Google's supposedly imminent fall.
Those stories sound pretty scary. They're also utterly wrong. And
they're wrong in a way that exemplifies why so much of U.S. industry
is in a terrible research and development (R&D) slump, and why Google
should be congratulated for their "moonshots" -- not ridiculed.
Once upon a time -- not so long ago relatively -- there was a
reasonable understanding in this country that long-term R&D was
crucial to our technological, financial, and personal futures. That's
long-term as in spending money on projects that might take a long time
to pay off -- or might never pay off for the firms making the
investments -- but that still might play crucial roles in our future
going forward.
When we think about the foundation of modern R&D, it's typical for
AT&T's Bell Telephone Laboratories (Bell Labs) to spring immediately
to mind. Not the Bell Labs of today -- an emaciated skeleton of its
former greatness -- but of the years before AT&T's 1984 Bell system
beak-up divestiture and shortly thereafter.
The list of developments that sprang forth from the Labs is
mind-boggling. If Lucent Technologies did nothing else when they took
over Bell Labs and hastened its decline, at least they produced in
2000 this great music video celebrating the Labs' innovations over the
many decades ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzHp7Ahkjes). Mentally
start subtracting out items from the list shown in that video and
watch how our entire modern world would crumble away around us.
Yet -- and this is crucial -- most of those Bell Labs technologies
that are so much a part of our lives today were anything but sure bets
at the time they were being developed. Hell, who needs something
better than trusty old vacuum tubes? What possible use is
superconductivity? Why would anyone need flexible, easy to use
computer operating systems?
It's only with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight that we can really
appreciate the genius -- and critically the willingness to put
sufficient R&D dollars behind such genius -- that allowed these
technologies to flourish in the face of contemporaneous skepticism at
the time.
Much of that kind of skepticism is driven by the twin prongs of people
who basically don't understand technology deeply, and/or by investors
who see any effort to be a waste if it isn't virtually guaranteed to
bring in significant short-term profits.
But we see again and again what happens when technology companies fall
prey to such short-term thinking. Magnificent firms like Digital
Equipment Corporation (DEC) vanish with relative rapidity into the
sunset to be largely forgotten. Household names like Kodak flicker and
fade away into shadows. And as noted, even the great Bell Labs has
become the "reality show" version of its former self.
Nor is it encouraging when we see other firms who have had robust R&D
efforts now culling them in various ways, such as Microsoft's very
recent closing of their Silicon Valley research arm.
It probably shouldn't be surprising that various researchers from
Microsoft, Bell Labs, and DEC have ended up at ... you guessed it ...
Google.
So it also shouldn't be surprising why it's difficult not look askance
at claims that Google is on the wrong path investing in autonomous
cars, or artificial intelligence, or balloon-based Internet access --
or Google Glass.
Because even if one chooses inappropriately and inaccurately -- but
for the sake of the argument -- to expound pessimistic consumer
futures for those techs as currently defined, they will still change
the world in amazingly positive ways.
Internet access in the future inevitably will include high altitude
distribution systems. AI will be solving problems the nature of which
we can't even imagine today. Many thousands of lives will be saved by
improved driver assist systems even if you sullenly choose to assume
that autonomous cars don't become a mass consumer item in the near
future. And medical, safety, and a range of industrial applications
for Google Glass and similar devices are already rapidly deploying.
This is what serious R&D is really all about. Our collective and
personal futures depend upon the willingness of firms to take these
risks toward building tomorrow.
We need far more firms willing to follow Google's R&D model in these
regards, rather than being utterly focused on projects that might suck
some coins quickly into the hopper, but do little or nothing to help
their countries, their peoples, and the world in the long run.
Here in the U.S. we've willingly and self-destructively permitted
short-term Wall Street thinking to flush much of our best R&D talent
down the proverbial toilet.
And unless we get our heads on straight about this immediately, we'll
be sending our futures and our children's futures down the same dark sewer.
We are far better than that.
Take care, all.
--Lauren--
Lauren Weinstein ([email protected]): http://www.vortex.com/lauren
Founder:
- Network Neutrality Squad: http://www.nnsquad.org
- PRIVACY Forum: http://www.vortex.com/privacy-info
Co-Founder: People For Internet Responsibility: http://www.pfir.org/pfir-info
Member: ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy
Lauren's Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com
Google+: http://google.com/+LaurenWeinstein
Twitter: http://twitter.com/laurenweinstein
Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800 / Skype: vortex.com
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