Inside the Google Machine
Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin offer a peek inside the Google machine, sharing tidbits about international search patterns and the philanthropic Google Foundation project (which soon became Google.org). They talk about how their shared Montessori background led to the company’s “20 Percent Time” policy, which is directly responsible for success stories such as Google News and AdSense. Google’s dedication to innovative thinking and employee happiness is behind everything from the offices’ specially soundproofed projectors (which make it much easier to follow what’s being said in meetings) to the company’s thematically rotating logo.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3615737058608367601
About Sergey Brin and Larry Page:
Sergey Brin and Larry Page invented Google: the technology, the company, the verb. How did their search business, relatively late to the game, come to rule the Web?
The answer might be found in the personalities of the Google founders. Brin and Page met in grad school at Stanford in the mid-’90s, and in 1996 started working on a search technology based on a new idea: that relevant results come from context. Their technology analyzed the number of times a given website was linked to by other sites — assuming that the more links, the more relevant the site — and ranked sites accordingly. In 1998, they opened Google in a garage-office in Menlo Park. In 1999 their software left beta and started its steady rise to web domination.
But technology alone doesn’t account for Google’s breakaway success. In fact, Google’s approach to site design and advertising may have been more radical than the technology itself: In an era when search engines were super-saturated with sponsor messages, Google broke the mold with their famously friendly and simple interface. Paid links were clearly identfied; no pop-windows or banner ads were used; the homepage offered little more than their whimsical logo and a single search box. Customers loved it.
Brin and Page’s innovation-friendly office culture (beyond the famous free food, there’s the company’s “20 Percent Time,” which encourages engineers to spend a fifth of their time pursuing whatever projects ignite their interest) has created fertile ground for spectacular successes beyond search, including AdSense/AdWords, Google News, Google Maps, Google Earth, and Gmail. The company’s belief in clean design and ethical ad sales, and its corporate philosophy — often simply stated as “Don’t be evil” — continue to set the company apart.
In 2004, Brin and Page launched the company’s philanthropic arm, Google.org, focused on solving worldwide problems relating to poverty, energy and the environment.
Tags: Business, Employee Happiness, Foundation Project, Google, Innovation, Innovation, Larry Page, Larry Page Sergey Brin, search, Search Engines, Search Google, Search Patterns, Search Technology, Sergey Brin, Sergey Brin And Larry Page, Sponsor Messages, Technology, Technology, Time Policy, Web DominationThe Web’s Secret Stories
Jonathan Harris wants to make sense of the infinite world on the Web — so he builds dazzling graphic interfaces that help us visualize the data floating around out there. Here he presents “We Feel Fine,” a project that scours blogs to collect the planet’s emoti(c)ons, and the “Yahoo! Time Capsule,” which preserves images, quotes and thoughts snapped up in 2006. And he premieres “Universe,” which presents current events as constellations of words — a tag cloud of our collective consciousness.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2302140603087005157
About Jonathan Harris:
Brooklyn-based artist Jonathan Harris’ work celebrates the world’s diversity even as it illustrates the universal concerns of its occupants. His computer programs scour the Internet for unfiltered content, which his beautiful interfaces then organize to create coherence from the chaos.
His projects are both intensely personal (the “We Feel Fine” project, made with Sep Kanvar, which scans the world’s blogs to collect snapshots of the writers’ feelings) and entirely global (the new “Universe,” which turns current events into constellations of words). But their effect is the same — to show off a world that resonates with shared emotions, concerns, problems, triumphs and troubles.
Tags: Business, Cloud, Collective Consciousness, Design, Emotional Intelligence, Internet, Jonathan Harris, TechnologyBrain Science and Computing
To date, there hasn’t been an overarching theory of how the human brain really works, Jeff Hawkins argues in this compelling talk. That’s because we still haven’t defined intelligence accurately. But one thing’s for sure, he says: The brain isn’t like a powerful computer processor. It’s more like a memory system that records everything we experience and helps us predict, intelligently, what will happen next. Bringing this new brain science to computer devices will enable powerful new applications — and it will happen sooner than you think.
About Jeff Hawkins:
Jeff Hawkins pioneered the development of PDAs such as the Palm and Treo. Now he’s trying to understand how the human brain really works, and adapt its method — which he describes as a deep system for storing memory — to create new kinds of computers and tools.
Jeff Hawkins’ Palm PDA became such a widely used productivity tool during the 1990s that some fanatical users claimed it replaced their brains. But Hawkins’ deepest interest was in the brain itself. So after the success of the Palm and Treo, which he brought to market at Handspring, Hawkins delved into brain research at the Redwood Center for Theoretical Neuroscience in Berkeley, Calif., and a new company called Numenta.
Hawkins’ dual goal is to achieve an understanding of how the human brain actually works — and then develop software to mimic its functionality, delivering true artificial intelligence. In his book On Intelligence (2004) he lays out his compelling, controversial theory: Contrary to popular AI wisdom, the human neocortex doesn’t work like a processor; rather, it relies on a memory system that stores and plays back experiences to help us predict, intelligently, what will happen next. He think that “hierarchical temporal memory” computer platforms, which mimic this functionality (and which Numenta might pioneer), could enable groundbreaking new applications that could powerfully extend human intelligence.
Tags: Brain, Business, Controversial Theory, Dual Goal, Intelligence, Jeff Hawkins, memory, Neocortex, New Brain, Palm Pda, Powerful Computer, Productivity Tool, Redwood Center, Science, Technology, Technology, Theoretical Neuroscience, True Artificial Intelligence, wisdomHow Technology Will Transform Us
Prolific inventor and outrageous visionary Ray Kurzweil explains in abundant, grounded detail why — by the 2020s — we will have reverse-engineered the human brain, and nanobots will be operating your consciousness. Kurzweil draws on years of research to show the speed at which technology is evolving, and projects forward into an almost unthinkable future to outline the ways we’ll use technology to augment our own capabilities, forever blurring the lines between human and machine.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5529265790536722443
About Ray Kurzweil:
Inventor, entrepreneur, visionary, Ray Kurzweil’s accomplishments read as a startling series of firsts — a litany of technological breakthroughs we’ve come to take for granted. Kurzweil invented the first optical character recognition (OCR) software for transforming the written word into data, the first print-to-speech software for the blind, the first text-to-speech synthesizer, and many electronic instruments.
Yet his impact as a futurist and philosopher is no less significant. In his best-selling books, which include The Age of Spiritual Machines and The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology, Kurzweil depicts in detail a portrait of the human condition over the next few decades, as accelerating technologies forever blur the line between human and machine.
Tags: Bestseller, Brain, Business, Electronic Instruments, Entrepreneurs, Futurist, Innovation, Litany, Philosopher, Prolific Inventor, Ray Kurzweil, Spiritual Machines, Technological Breakthroughs, Technology, Technology, Text To Speech, Text To Speech Synthesizer, VisionaryLearn From Spaghetti Sauce
In this witty monologue, Malcolm Gladwell follows the career of a food industry consultant who uncovered a key secret to what eaters like. Running huge focus groups to find customers’ truest tastes, Gladwell’s hero draws a radical conclusion, an epiphany that has defined food marketing ever since.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5900517168038776932
About Malcolm Gladwell:
Malcolm Gladwell specializes in surprises — counterintuitive truths discovered by clever researchers, obscure historians, and ordinary people observing the world. In his first year as a staff writer at the “New Yorker in 1996, he captivated readers with an article titled “The Tipping Point,” which grappled with a mysterious sudden drop in New York City crime, by applying the principles of epidemiology to policing. “The Tipping Point” ultimately became a book and has remained on the New York Times best-seller lists for years.
Meanwhile, Gladwell has gone on to explore similar mismatches — mammography and fighter jets (it’s all about seeing), pit bulls and racial profiling, Wayne Gretsky and Yo-Yo Ma — writing cross-disciplinary articles that illuminate hidden facts about group behavior, business and individual selves. Gladwell began 2007 with a controversial look at the Enron case, distinct from all the reportage that’s come before.
Tags: Bestseller, Business, Food Industry Consultant, Food Marketing, Gladwell Malcolm, Group Behavior, Innovation, Malcolm Gladwell, Marketing, Racial Profiling, Selling, Spaghetti Sauce, Tipping Point, Wayne Gretsky
