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I remember reading a glowing profile a few years ago on Nathan Myhrvold and Intellectual Ventures(I believe it was on Wired), how they got together a bunch of b
by sireat 17y ago
I remember reading a glowing profile a few years ago on Nathan Myhrvold and Intellectual Ventures(I believe it was on Wired), how they got together a bunch of big scientists and came up with cool new ideas (and then patented them, but that seemed fair to me at the time).
Seems that was just good PR back then, or possibly Mr. Myhrvold started out the business on the best of the intentions... till the cold hard reality of being able to make money by just sitting back, exploiting the broken patent system and extorting raised its appeal.
Has IV actually been responsible for something good? I do not ask this sarcastically(almost), what good deeds have they done?
- jcl 17y agoI don't know if this qualifies, but there was an article about a mosquito-killing invention a few days ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=516916 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=516916
- sketerpot 17y agoThey're working on traveling wave reactors, a particularly slick kind of fast-neutron breeder reactor: http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?ch=specialsections&sc=tr10&id=22114 http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?ch=special...
- troystribling 17y agoBill Gates mentioned this in his TED talk http://ufuk.posterous.com/news-alert-bill-gates-is-officially-redeemed http://ufuk.posterous.com/news-alert-bill-gates-is-officiall.... Doesn't he have an affiliation with IV?
- Psyonic 17y agoIn Gladwell's article it says Gates is an investor.
- qohen 17y agoThe "glowing profile" you mention may have been this 2008 article in the New Yorker, by Malcolm Gladwell: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/05/12/080512fa_fact_gladwell http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/05/12/080512fa_fact_...
- madair 17y agoMy appreciation for Malcolm Gladwell's work took a major tumble at the publication of that article. We had enough sycophantic executive worship from Wired in the 90s to keep me immune to that sort of carefully packaged PR for a lifetime.
- rortian 17y agoI don't think you read the article. The conclusion is that ideas are cheap. The dude was the ideas man. When a company is seen as a bullshitting enterprise how is it sycophantic?
- madair 17y agoYes, I read the article a few times since it was released. A knowledgeable reader like you or I realizes the travesty of an organization of rich people sitting around dreaming up ideas so they can assign a team to document for patent. But you have to interpret the article to see that angle, because the extent of Malcolm Gladwell's interpretations are the problems of eponymous attribution and the message that "you can do it too", which comes off disingenuously: "The unavoidable first response to Myhrvold and his crew is to think of them as a kind of dream team, but, of course, the fact that they invent as prodigiously and effortlessly as they do is evidence that they are not a dream team at all. You could put together an Intellectual Ventures in Los Angeles, if you wanted to, and Chicago, and New York and Baltimore, and anywhere you could find enough imagination, a fresh set of eyes, and a room full of Varleys and Pfaffs." Yes, he's right, we can setup a patent mill too! (I know, that's not fair, he means that we could setup an invention workshop too, but that's not what we typically see I.V. as.) On the other hand, there's Dean Kamen. Now that's an invention workshop! Bravo!