10 ms·

"Men Who Do Nothing But Think."

66 points by asciilifeform 16y ago

aditya 16y ago
Weird. They were an engineering company, which then bought a media company (CBS) and eventually got consumed by another media giant (Viacom). I wonder what happened to all the men who do nothing but think over the years...
- sethg 16y ago
  They retired, and their successors do nothing but PowerPoint.
  - count 16y ago
    They changed the ad to 'Anything but Thinking'. :(
    - mistermann 16y ago
      Men who do nothing but scheme of ways to advance their career.
carpdiem 16y ago
That's a great advertisement. It's too bad that groups like Westinghouse's R&D division and Bell Labs aren't around anymore. Are there any real corporate research groups doing basic research anymore?
- vecter 16y ago
  Microsoft Research and AT&T Labs are still doing some fundamental stuff.
- wizawuza 16y ago
  ibm's watson is still up to no good
- derefr 16y ago
  There are a few, but I would say that most basic research these days is academic. However, today's Universities are similar enough to corporations that their professors and grad students can be considered to be "corporate research groups." If we kill the Java school (or more generally "University is knowledge worker trade-school") mentality, Universities will stop being able to signal their value through "owning" large numbers of researchers, and all the demand for innovation will shift back to corporations.
  - wisty 16y ago
    OK, I have to disagree, simply because I think it's that's a wonderful argument and HN bans empty ++ posts. Companies that do basic research are a different kettle of fish. They make money on breakthroughs and innovation. Java schools make money on students, so the thinking is an entirely different kind - formalizing existing knowledge (so the students can study something more "academic"). Sure, you can formalize code as category theory, algebra, sets, and so on, but it's not exactly an out-of-box breakthrough. Also, the type of researchers you get are excellent students, not engineers who made innovations in the field and got kicked up to the lab.
    - derefr 16y ago
      Java schools don't make money from the students by "formalizing existing knowledge", though. It's more of a prisoners' dilemma: they make the most money by relying on other schools to formalize knowledge, and then delivering it to their own students as cheaply, but with as much implied authoritativeness, as possible. But I meant to indict here more than just what you normally think of as "Java schools"—virtually all Universities are receptacles for students who go to them to get a high-paying (and high-status!) job, and thus virtually all Universities cater to those students. Java schools are just more upfront about it. How Universities actually make their money is a combination of convincing students to study there, and receiving grants. Both of these rely on the status of the researchers in the employ of the University—even though the researchers (the Ph.Ds) are very infrequently the students' lecturers. Students pay not to learn from high-status people, but simply to coexist in an environment with them, and have the "status" of the institution rub off on them. In order to reverse this process, we have to remove "has studied at high-status University X" as a judging criterion for high-status jobs. That may well be impossible, though, given how embedded the idea has become in our culture.
- fleitz 16y ago
  Microsoft Research does a lot of basic R&D. Most technology companies are fundamentally R&D companies. Also, the J Craig Venter institute. One of the issues that with the transition from the industrial age to the information age is that our focus has shifted from industrial research to information research. Because so much of the information age is intangible it's unclear that real progress is happening. Two things have happened that further hide these issues, the results of research are incrementally realized and the pace has increased to such a rate that it is simply expected. News is when the transistor density or aerial density does NOT double in a year. Even with industrial research the issue is that no one is around to see the benefits. When someone figures out how to run a lights out factory they will be hailed as greedy instead of innovative. Even the BP disaster is an example of corporate R&D, does anyone else find it incredible that we are repairing (or not repairing) an oil well that is 5,000 feet under water and there are no humans in sight? The fact that the disaster is even possible should be awe inspiring to the technological progress of humanity.
  - ebiester 16y ago
    It would be nice if we were repairing it. :/ However, I think my first reaction to the depth that they were drilling was "That's fucking awesome!" rather than "that's fucking stupid." The stupid was finding out that they were taking this for granted now and skimping on the safety. Speaking of, BP does a lot of R&D in the energy field themselves. Even the energy companies want to be in on alternative energy when it comes.
    - bnoordhuis 16y ago
      > Even the energy companies want to be in on alternative energy when it comes. The oil companies are not stupid. There will come a day when it is no longer economically feasible to extract the remaining oil. Any company that hasn't diversified by then can turn off the lights and go home.
  - vog 16y ago
    > The fact that the [BP] disaster is even possible should be awe inspiring to the technological progress of humanity. I wouldn't describe that as "technological progress". Technology is usually described as 1) controlling natural powers to 2) reach some purpose. The BP disaster fails to achieve both. More generally, sloppy security standards are a strong sign that a technology is either not fully developed or not fully understood. This holds for engineering as well as for programming. So the disaster is a sign of missing progress in technology.
- blhack 16y ago
  Honestly, I'd say that google is... I mean...they make smartphones now, how does that make sense beyond "well, we locked a bunch of geeks in a room, and they thought this would be cool...so we did it!". Or howabout google books? Or all the dark fibre they purchased...or the google datacenter in a shipping container things? Perhaps my vision is skewed as an outsider looking in, but google seems to make a lot of really cool things. They seem to adhere to the "innovate now, monetize later" model, which is really cool.
  - moolave 16y ago
    What I do like about this principle is, these "thinkers" do draw out awesome ideas from a source. I will be sounding esoteric here - and you can start your nonchalance, but there definitely is a way of tapping into that superconscious knowledge through that untapped ether. I believe most of history's brilliant ideas came from those type of environments.
  - kimfuh 16y ago
    youtube.com/testtube
  - count 16y ago
    They didn't have a bunch of geeks sitting around thinking that up - they bought a company that was actively working on it. Android isn't a google invention - it was an acquisition.
- albertsun 16y ago
  HP Research and Intel both do a lot of basic research as well.
707 16y ago
"It owns no factories, manufactures no products and makes no shipments" Everyone below seems to see there is a problem but know one seems to be able to connect the dots. Somewhere, someplace, Chairman Mao is smiling.
- jodrellblank 16y ago
  Yet they create value and solve problems, and thereby earn money.
JoelMcCracken 16y ago
Props to the Pittsburgh reference.
- Qz 16y ago
  I know a few people here in Pittsburgh who work for Westinghouse doing exactly the stuff that poster is talking about.
lvecsey 16y ago
Xerox is another example. I think these areas thrive on the surrounding incompetence and that you can't really have one without the other.
r0s 16y ago
Love my 25" Westinghouse monitor. It's quite well designed and has held up great over the years. After the purchase I got interested in the company, it has a long and interesting history. The thing that sparked my curiosity was simply noticing the logo in strange places. Last week I saw Westinghouse branded Pyrex bakeware at a thriftstore. Years ago I found the logo on a residential home window indicating a security system. I've seen it in many other unexpected places. Interesting, diverse company. I stand by the quality of this display, for what it's worth! Discontinued at Newegg but here it is: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824255011&cm_re=westinghouse-_-24-255-011-_-Product http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824255...
- madh 16y ago
  The current Westinghouse has basically nothing to do with the old Westinghouse. The current iteration (at least since 1998) is a spin-off of CBS that just licenses the brand out to other companies. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westinghouse_Electric_Corporation_(1998) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westinghouse_Electric_Corporati...
- tesseract 16y ago
  > Last week I saw Westinghouse branded Pyrex bakeware at a thriftstore. It was probably actual borosilicate glass, too, not like the modern Pyrex-branded stuff which is just tempered soda-lime. But that's another story...
fractallyte 16y ago
I've long cherished a dream of seeing an organization made up entirely of scientists, that perpetuates itself through monetizing its research and development. It would hire out its members to positions within corporations or governments (rather like IBM consultants), and thus could (finally!) allow scientists to achieve parity with other highly paid - but far less VALUABLE - jobs. I can imagine all kinds of accompanying benefits: a boost in the take up of scientific subjects in colleges and universities; talent that flourishes in an environment free of corporate profiteering; &c. Philanthropy would be the only way to properly bootstrap this kind of 'startup'. But ultimately it could be civilization-changing!
- MaysonL 16y ago
  SRI is something like this: consider the mouse.
  - Caligula 16y ago
    SRI is pretty cool. They recently commercialized some of their work, a mobile project called SIRI that just got bought by apple for $150 million.
  - whyenot 16y ago
    My dad worked at SRI for nearly 30 years, and I think in many ways for him it was a dream job. The variety and freedom to immerse yourself in a totally different topic every six months to a year was something he really loved. But, I also know working there was quite stressful because there was not much job security. He had to always keep an eye on the hopper to ensure that once he finished his current contract that there would be another project for him to work on or there was a good chance he would lose his job.
nl 16y ago
Soon, one it will occur to one of the men who think that they could consider hiring a woman. Or maybe not.
- nl 16y ago
  Really? Downvoted? Did no one else find the sexism in that poster as noticeable as I did?
  - ericd 16y ago
    I believe it came from a time when American women didn't work in offices.
    - count 16y ago
      We've always had secretaries!
  - sdfx 16y ago
    I suppose you object to the phrase "Men who do nothing but think"? While sexism might have been prevalent in most companies during the time of this ad by modern standards, this phrase is not necessarily sexist. Sure, if you'd publish this ad today the silhouette would depict a woman and the text would be different, but "men" can be used in a gender neutral way [1] as in "All men are created equal". Take it as an artifact from a different time and don't read too much into it. [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-neutral_pronoun#Historical_solutions http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-neutral_pronoun#Historic...
    - Confusion 16y ago
      You first argue that it isn't sexism, because 'men' may be used in a gender neutral way. Then you continue to argue that 'it is an artifact from a different time', which is a way of explaining the fact that it is sexist. I fully agree that it is an artifact from a different time. It wasn't considered to be sexist at the time and it wasn't intended to be sexist, but from todays point of view, it's definititely sexist. It's interesting how our minds work alike in the same wrong ways, because I had pretty much the same train of thought.

66 points by asciilifeform 16y ago

Weird. They were an engineering company, which then bought a media company (CBS) and eventually got consumed by another media giant (Viacom). I wonder what happened to all the men who do nothing but think over the years...

sethg 16y ago
They retired, and their successors do nothing but PowerPoint.
- count 16y ago
  They changed the ad to 'Anything but Thinking'. :(
  - mistermann 16y ago
    Men who do nothing but scheme of ways to advance their career.

carpdiem 16y ago

That's a great advertisement. It's too bad that groups like Westinghouse's R&D division and Bell Labs aren't around anymore. Are there any real corporate research groups doing basic research anymore?

vecter 16y ago
Microsoft Research and AT&T Labs are still doing some fundamental stuff.
wizawuza 16y ago
ibm's watson is still up to no good
derefr 16y ago
There are a few, but I would say that most basic research these days is academic. However, today's Universities are similar enough to corporations that their professors and grad students can be considered to be "corporate research groups." If we kill the Java school (or more generally "University is knowledge worker trade-school") mentality, Universities will stop being able to signal their value through "owning" large numbers of researchers, and all the demand for innovation will shift back to corporations.
- wisty 16y ago
  OK, I have to disagree, simply because I think it's that's a wonderful argument and HN bans empty ++ posts. Companies that do basic research are a different kettle of fish. They make money on breakthroughs and innovation. Java schools make money on students, so the thinking is an entirely different kind - formalizing existing knowledge (so the students can study something more "academic"). Sure, you can formalize code as category theory, algebra, sets, and so on, but it's not exactly an out-of-box breakthrough. Also, the type of researchers you get are excellent students, not engineers who made innovations in the field and got kicked up to the lab.
  - derefr 16y ago
    Java schools don't make money from the students by "formalizing existing knowledge", though. It's more of a prisoners' dilemma: they make the most money by relying on other schools to formalize knowledge, and then delivering it to their own students as cheaply, but with as much implied authoritativeness, as possible. But I meant to indict here more than just what you normally think of as "Java schools"—virtually all Universities are receptacles for students who go to them to get a high-paying (and high-status!) job, and thus virtually all Universities cater to those students. Java schools are just more upfront about it. How Universities actually make their money is a combination of convincing students to study there, and receiving grants. Both of these rely on the status of the researchers in the employ of the University—even though the researchers (the Ph.Ds) are very infrequently the students' lecturers. Students pay not to learn from high-status people, but simply to coexist in an environment with them, and have the "status" of the institution rub off on them. In order to reverse this process, we have to remove "has studied at high-status University X" as a judging criterion for high-status jobs. That may well be impossible, though, given how embedded the idea has become in our culture.
fleitz 16y ago
Microsoft Research does a lot of basic R&D. Most technology companies are fundamentally R&D companies. Also, the J Craig Venter institute. One of the issues that with the transition from the industrial age to the information age is that our focus has shifted from industrial research to information research. Because so much of the information age is intangible it's unclear that real progress is happening. Two things have happened that further hide these issues, the results of research are incrementally realized and the pace has increased to such a rate that it is simply expected. News is when the transistor density or aerial density does NOT double in a year. Even with industrial research the issue is that no one is around to see the benefits. When someone figures out how to run a lights out factory they will be hailed as greedy instead of innovative. Even the BP disaster is an example of corporate R&D, does anyone else find it incredible that we are repairing (or not repairing) an oil well that is 5,000 feet under water and there are no humans in sight? The fact that the disaster is even possible should be awe inspiring to the technological progress of humanity.
- ebiester 16y ago
  It would be nice if we were repairing it. :/ However, I think my first reaction to the depth that they were drilling was "That's fucking awesome!" rather than "that's fucking stupid." The stupid was finding out that they were taking this for granted now and skimping on the safety. Speaking of, BP does a lot of R&D in the energy field themselves. Even the energy companies want to be in on alternative energy when it comes.
  - bnoordhuis 16y ago
    > Even the energy companies want to be in on alternative energy when it comes. The oil companies are not stupid. There will come a day when it is no longer economically feasible to extract the remaining oil. Any company that hasn't diversified by then can turn off the lights and go home.
- vog 16y ago
  > The fact that the [BP] disaster is even possible should be awe inspiring to the technological progress of humanity. I wouldn't describe that as "technological progress". Technology is usually described as 1) controlling natural powers to 2) reach some purpose. The BP disaster fails to achieve both. More generally, sloppy security standards are a strong sign that a technology is either not fully developed or not fully understood. This holds for engineering as well as for programming. So the disaster is a sign of missing progress in technology.
blhack 16y ago
Honestly, I'd say that google is... I mean...they make smartphones now, how does that make sense beyond "well, we locked a bunch of geeks in a room, and they thought this would be cool...so we did it!". Or howabout google books? Or all the dark fibre they purchased...or the google datacenter in a shipping container things? Perhaps my vision is skewed as an outsider looking in, but google seems to make a lot of really cool things. They seem to adhere to the "innovate now, monetize later" model, which is really cool.
- moolave 16y ago
  What I do like about this principle is, these "thinkers" do draw out awesome ideas from a source. I will be sounding esoteric here - and you can start your nonchalance, but there definitely is a way of tapping into that superconscious knowledge through that untapped ether. I believe most of history's brilliant ideas came from those type of environments.
- kimfuh 16y ago
  youtube.com/testtube
- count 16y ago
  They didn't have a bunch of geeks sitting around thinking that up - they bought a company that was actively working on it. Android isn't a google invention - it was an acquisition.
albertsun 16y ago
HP Research and Intel both do a lot of basic research as well.

707 16y ago

"It owns no factories, manufactures no products and makes no shipments" Everyone below seems to see there is a problem but know one seems to be able to connect the dots. Somewhere, someplace, Chairman Mao is smiling.

jodrellblank 16y ago
Yet they create value and solve problems, and thereby earn money.

JoelMcCracken 16y ago

Props to the Pittsburgh reference.

Qz 16y ago
I know a few people here in Pittsburgh who work for Westinghouse doing exactly the stuff that poster is talking about.

lvecsey 16y ago

Xerox is another example. I think these areas thrive on the surrounding incompetence and that you can't really have one without the other.

r0s 16y ago

Love my 25" Westinghouse monitor. It's quite well designed and has held up great over the years. After the purchase I got interested in the company, it has a long and interesting history. The thing that sparked my curiosity was simply noticing the logo in strange places. Last week I saw Westinghouse branded Pyrex bakeware at a thriftstore. Years ago I found the logo on a residential home window indicating a security system. I've seen it in many other unexpected places. Interesting, diverse company. I stand by the quality of this display, for what it's worth! Discontinued at Newegg but here it is: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824255011&cm_re=westinghouse-_-24-255-011-_-Product http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824255...

madh 16y ago
The current Westinghouse has basically nothing to do with the old Westinghouse. The current iteration (at least since 1998) is a spin-off of CBS that just licenses the brand out to other companies. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westinghouse_Electric_Corporation_(1998) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westinghouse_Electric_Corporati...
tesseract 16y ago
> Last week I saw Westinghouse branded Pyrex bakeware at a thriftstore. It was probably actual borosilicate glass, too, not like the modern Pyrex-branded stuff which is just tempered soda-lime. But that's another story...

fractallyte 16y ago

I've long cherished a dream of seeing an organization made up entirely of scientists, that perpetuates itself through monetizing its research and development. It would hire out its members to positions within corporations or governments (rather like IBM consultants), and thus could (finally!) allow scientists to achieve parity with other highly paid - but far less VALUABLE - jobs. I can imagine all kinds of accompanying benefits: a boost in the take up of scientific subjects in colleges and universities; talent that flourishes in an environment free of corporate profiteering; &c. Philanthropy would be the only way to properly bootstrap this kind of 'startup'. But ultimately it could be civilization-changing!

MaysonL 16y ago
SRI is something like this: consider the mouse.
- Caligula 16y ago
  SRI is pretty cool. They recently commercialized some of their work, a mobile project called SIRI that just got bought by apple for $150 million.
- whyenot 16y ago
  My dad worked at SRI for nearly 30 years, and I think in many ways for him it was a dream job. The variety and freedom to immerse yourself in a totally different topic every six months to a year was something he really loved. But, I also know working there was quite stressful because there was not much job security. He had to always keep an eye on the hopper to ensure that once he finished his current contract that there would be another project for him to work on or there was a good chance he would lose his job.

nl 16y ago

Soon, one it will occur to one of the men who think that they could consider hiring a woman. Or maybe not.

nl 16y ago
Really? Downvoted? Did no one else find the sexism in that poster as noticeable as I did?
- ericd 16y ago
  I believe it came from a time when American women didn't work in offices.
  - count 16y ago
    We've always had secretaries!
- sdfx 16y ago
  I suppose you object to the phrase "Men who do nothing but think"? While sexism might have been prevalent in most companies during the time of this ad by modern standards, this phrase is not necessarily sexist. Sure, if you'd publish this ad today the silhouette would depict a woman and the text would be different, but "men" can be used in a gender neutral way [1] as in "All men are created equal". Take it as an artifact from a different time and don't read too much into it. [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-neutral_pronoun#Historical_solutions http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-neutral_pronoun#Historic...
  - Confusion 16y ago
    You first argue that it isn't sexism, because 'men' may be used in a gender neutral way. Then you continue to argue that 'it is an artifact from a different time', which is a way of explaining the fact that it is sexist. I fully agree that it is an artifact from a different time. It wasn't considered to be sexist at the time and it wasn't intended to be sexist, but from todays point of view, it's definititely sexist. It's interesting how our minds work alike in the same wrong ways, because I had pretty much the same train of thought.