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Does it bother anyone that "frightenly ambitious" begins with search and email? Seriously? This is the pinnacle of our contribution to mankind - building search

Does it bother anyone that "frightenly ambitious" begins with search and email? Seriously? This is the pinnacle of our contribution to mankind - building search engines and to-do lists? Where's the lunar base? The flying car? The personal robot? The cyborg? Meh, maybe I'm just getting old and grumpy. (To be fair I did like the other ones).

nl 15y ago
Seriously? Search is another word for artificial intelligence. Email means a universal way for people to communicate. Lunar bases & flying cars aren't ambitious, they are just expensive. Personal robots are here now in vertical spaces[1] and there are at least 200,000 cyborgs walking around now[2]. I think both these areas are worth working in, but I think you underestimate the ambition of a word like search. [1] http://www.irobot.com/ http://www.irobot.com/ [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cochlear_implant http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cochlear_implant
- TheCowboy 15y ago
  They're expensive because they're inefficient. To accomplish them efficiently is ambitious and elegant without a doubt. A startup that can chip away at what makes these things so inefficient is going in the right direction. Looking for inefficiencies, such as with present day email, is a good way to find a direction. Economics is still at its heart the study of the problem of scarcity. Economies, and all economic activity, attempt to alleviate or manage that problem.
  - nl 15y ago
    Yes, I agree with that. SpaceX etc are doing well at the "chip away" strategy. I also agree that a cheap lunar base would be a wonderfully ambitious project!
  - telent 15y ago
    This is a nit pick, but much economic activity these days is nothing to do with alleviating scarcity and everything to do with introducing artificial scarcity where it didn't previously exist. See e.g. Intellectual property.
    - nl 15y ago
      Economics != economic activity (at least in the context you are using it). TheCowboy is right: Economics is still at its heart the study of the problem of scarcity.
      - telent 15y ago
        I said it was a nitpick, but the post to which I responded did say "all economic activity". Does it even matter? It matters if it means our fully automated jobless future is penury and starvation instead of the post-scarcity Culture we're looking forward to.
- fauigerzigerk 15y ago
  OK, but "cleaning" is yet another word for artificial intelligence. I think you underestimate the power of economics. Can you imagine how many people are busy cleaning things? I find it amazing that the difference between tasks like washing cloths and cleaning toilets is so small for humans and so huge for machines. We've had washing machines forever, but we're still cleaning our toilets manually. And cleaning is just one of a large number of tasks that require similar kinds of intelligence. If robotics is able to close that gap, the world changes more profoundly and more quickly than ever before. All of a sudden, most of the jobs performed by untrained people will disappear without replacement. The current thinking is that tasks that get automated are replaced by "higher level" tasks, but I think that's not actually what happened. Automated tasks have largely been replaced by other tasks that are equally simple for humans but more difficult for machines. As a result, most people are still doing work that anyone can pick up in a week. If that gap closes, we're in for a pretty difficult but ultimately wonderful transition. People have been crying wolf out of fear of this transition for hundereds of years. This time it's for real. Even if humans find new things that aren't yet automated, the transition will be too fast for at least a generation.
  - tomjen3 15y ago
    Please. Stop. Bringing that old saw back while claiming that 'this time it is for real'. Humans can do wonderful things when the alternative is to starve or lose their habitat. It is not different this time, it will not be different the next time, nor any time after that. Won't happen until we have a perfect AI which can do all jobs. Then, and only then, will humanity take a permanent vacation.
    - fauigerzigerk 15y ago
      I'm not talking permanent. What is different this time is this: a) The transition will happen more quickly because the kind of intelligence you need to clean a room is very broadly applicable. It affects almost all manual tasks at the same time. b) Contrary to earlier transitions, there will not be many tasks left that untrained people can perform and that are similar enough to the old ones. A farmer can go work in a factory. Most cleaners will not become artists and entertainers within their lifetime. I don't think humanity will ever take a permanent vacation. There will always be something that humans want from other humans and there will always be something to exchange as payment.
staunch 15y ago
Facebook and Google have improved the daily lives of billions of people. Tesla Motors' electric car? Very impressive and a lot of promise, but so far all it's done is increase the self-satisfaction of ~1000 people. Look at Star Trek. Other than the spaceship itself the most impressive things are the technology the people use. The Siri-like computer interface, iPad-like computers, Skype-like communications technology, etc.
- yirt 15y ago
  And yet, Star Trek falls firmly into the social SF camp. The tech is incidental, left abstract or waved away with babble so that the personal interactions can proceed. Obsessing over the latest gadget incarnation wrapped in shiny branding is just the opposite, consumerism rather than tech which quietly enables.
- kamaal 15y ago
  Facebook and Google have improved the daily lives of billions of people. Tesla Motors' electric car? Very impressive and a lot of promise, but so far all it's done is increase the self-satisfaction of ~1000 people. The same could be told about computer in the 1950's, I am talking about the famous misquote : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_J._Watson#Famous_misquote http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_J._Watson#Famous_misquot... there was a world market for maybe five computers If fossil fuels aren't going drive cars in the future its going to be something else. Fuel cells or Electricity. If IBM had thought or if any body else would have thought how difficult it was to create computing power to derive any meaningful value. We wouldn't be having computers today.
  - jarek 15y ago
    > If fossil fuels aren't going drive cars in the future its going to be something else. The other option is we won't have cars.
zem 15y ago
you are vastly underestimating how much email has changed the world. if a better email can do for this generation what email did for the last one, i'll back it against anything on your list for sheer bang for the buck.
jakejake 15y ago
The frightening part is the idea that you would be trying to disrupt seemingly invincible tech companies like google, which would be an insane business plan for a startup looking for a $50k kickstart investment. But, I remember when google was first released. I thought the search engine market was already full with yahoo and alta vista dominating at the time. Who knew?!
- tomjen3 15y ago
  What is it they say? It seems invincible until it suddenly doesn't any more. But at any count what companies seem like or appear to do doesn't matter to your company. What matters is what they are and what they do. If they seem scary, good, that will only serve to keep others from trying to beat them -> less competitor for you. Now go forth and conquer.
- mmcconnell1618 15y ago
  Google offered to sell to Alta Vista (for somewhere in the 1-2 million range) if I recall correctly and they were turned down. Sometimes the giants don't see change coming.
  - wcarss 15y ago
    It was $1,000,000 to Excite, not Alta Vista. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excite http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excite
mcartyem 15y ago
Maybe it's not as bothersome as it sounds. Donald Knuth said the two biggest problems in Computer Science are searching and sorting.
ahoyhere 15y ago
What about this? "In the developing world, 24,000 children under the age of five die every day from preventable causes like diarrhea contracted from unclean water." - UNICEF That's 54 jumbo jets a day. I also remain unimpressed by the ambition of his list. And by yours.
- lutorm 15y ago
  They die because they can't afford clean water, so there's no money to be made in solving that problem. Capitalism does not have a heart.
  - ahoyhere 15y ago
    No, they die because they are ignorant of sanitation and therefore don't have any. Have you read anything on the subject, or are you just assuming? Secondly, there is certainly money to be made in solving the problem, if you're not a truly lazy thinker who bases his conclusions off what he hears in TV news soundbites: http://www.gizmag.com/go/4418/ http://www.gizmag.com/go/4418/ http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/15/clean-water-at-no-cost-just-add-carbon-credits/ http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/15/clean-water-... http://www.waterforpeople.org/programs/how-we-work/initiatives/sanitation-as-a-business.html http://www.waterforpeople.org/programs/how-we-work/initiativ... http://www.unwater.org/downloads/Sanitationisabusiness.pdf http://www.unwater.org/downloads/Sanitationisabusiness.pdf http://tlc.howstuffworks.com/family/green-inventors-solar-sanitation.htm http://tlc.howstuffworks.com/family/green-inventors-solar-sa... Lastly, I'm sure that TOMS and Warby Parker would be interested to hear that there's no money in helping poor people gain access to shoes or glasses, as well.
    - lutorm 15y ago
      My statement was not meant to be factual but rather indicative of a certain cynicism on my part about what I think the motivations behind people starting (the vast majority) of companies are. Sorry that wasn't clear.
      - 15y ago
icebraining 15y ago
The lunar base and the flying cars are pointless if your goal is to improve people's lives instead of just satisfying egos. And the personal robot is already being worked on, but instead of a single humanoid robot (which I always considered to be a bad approach), they're small and specialized.
pg 15y ago
That was just a selection of ambitious ideas. I didn't mean to imply it was a complete list; I never imagined anyone would think I meant that. I almost added a section on robots, but the talk was already long enough and I figured 7 was enough to illustrate my point that ambitious startup ideas are frightening.
- run4yourlives 15y ago
  I'm not understanding where you figured my point was that the list was not exhaustive enough; my point was you left out robotics and kept search and email in. Robotics actually, is an area where something huge seems right over the horizon. I'd certainly bet on the next game changer coming from robotics before any equally revolutionary activity comes from search or email. I don't necassarily disagree with what you do say about the two, I just don consider advances in these areas terribly important in the grand scheme of things.
  - blueprint 15y ago
    > I just don consider advances in these areas terribly important in the grand scheme of things. What is the grand scheme of things?
  - dbul 15y ago
    You, diego, et al. seem to have difficulty coming to terms with the author. It is clear from the article that by "frighteningly ambitious" the author means problems people currently have which seem insane to take on. They are problems people have because the author has indicated that he has them or has discussed with others who have them. Search and email are insane to take on because if you succeed with search, you are decimating a company with market cap in the hundreds of billions; succeeding in email means disrupting one of the original Internet protocols which virtually everyone uses. Thus, these are frighteningly ambitious. You instead see "frighteningly ambitious" and assume your own term which is in the realm of science fiction (cyborgs, personal robots, &c.). Robotics, incidentally, may be a frighteningly ambitious endeavor but only if you are considering something like autonomously scraping and repainting ships or actuation in camera pills: personal (autonomous) robotics won't happen in the near future (see iRobot Corp). So, assuming the author's definition of "frighteningly ambitious", search and email are important because they are problems people have now. If search weren't a problem, Union Square wouldn't have funded DuckDuckGo, and more to the point, DuckDuckGo wouldn't be growing. (I also have the exact problems the author describes with Google -- for the past 2 years I've had a problem with Google.) If it hasn't been shouted by Fred Wilson and Paul Graham enough: they have pain from dealing with email. They would throw their money at you if you offered a way to make email less painful. Maybe instead of spending two hours every day with email they could spend one hour with new/email and they could have a spare hour a day with their kids -- how valuable is an extra 14 whole days a year to these guys? How many people hate spending so much time on email who have means? Probably enough to make it worth investigating the problem. For what its worth, I'm frugal as Franklin and I would actually pay for email (i.e I wouldn't accept any common free email service because they aren't even worth $0.00 to me for a variety of reasons).

nl 15y ago

Seriously? Search is another word for artificial intelligence. Email means a universal way for people to communicate. Lunar bases & flying cars aren't ambitious, they are just expensive. Personal robots are here now in vertical spaces[1] and there are at least 200,000 cyborgs walking around now[2]. I think both these areas are worth working in, but I think you underestimate the ambition of a word like search. [1] http://www.irobot.com/ http://www.irobot.com/ [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cochlear_implant http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cochlear_implant

TheCowboy 15y ago
They're expensive because they're inefficient. To accomplish them efficiently is ambitious and elegant without a doubt. A startup that can chip away at what makes these things so inefficient is going in the right direction. Looking for inefficiencies, such as with present day email, is a good way to find a direction. Economics is still at its heart the study of the problem of scarcity. Economies, and all economic activity, attempt to alleviate or manage that problem.
- nl 15y ago
  Yes, I agree with that. SpaceX etc are doing well at the "chip away" strategy. I also agree that a cheap lunar base would be a wonderfully ambitious project!
- telent 15y ago
  This is a nit pick, but much economic activity these days is nothing to do with alleviating scarcity and everything to do with introducing artificial scarcity where it didn't previously exist. See e.g. Intellectual property.
  - nl 15y ago
    Economics != economic activity (at least in the context you are using it). TheCowboy is right: Economics is still at its heart the study of the problem of scarcity.
    - telent 15y ago
      I said it was a nitpick, but the post to which I responded did say "all economic activity". Does it even matter? It matters if it means our fully automated jobless future is penury and starvation instead of the post-scarcity Culture we're looking forward to.
fauigerzigerk 15y ago
OK, but "cleaning" is yet another word for artificial intelligence. I think you underestimate the power of economics. Can you imagine how many people are busy cleaning things? I find it amazing that the difference between tasks like washing cloths and cleaning toilets is so small for humans and so huge for machines. We've had washing machines forever, but we're still cleaning our toilets manually. And cleaning is just one of a large number of tasks that require similar kinds of intelligence. If robotics is able to close that gap, the world changes more profoundly and more quickly than ever before. All of a sudden, most of the jobs performed by untrained people will disappear without replacement. The current thinking is that tasks that get automated are replaced by "higher level" tasks, but I think that's not actually what happened. Automated tasks have largely been replaced by other tasks that are equally simple for humans but more difficult for machines. As a result, most people are still doing work that anyone can pick up in a week. If that gap closes, we're in for a pretty difficult but ultimately wonderful transition. People have been crying wolf out of fear of this transition for hundereds of years. This time it's for real. Even if humans find new things that aren't yet automated, the transition will be too fast for at least a generation.
- tomjen3 15y ago
  Please. Stop. Bringing that old saw back while claiming that 'this time it is for real'. Humans can do wonderful things when the alternative is to starve or lose their habitat. It is not different this time, it will not be different the next time, nor any time after that. Won't happen until we have a perfect AI which can do all jobs. Then, and only then, will humanity take a permanent vacation.
  - fauigerzigerk 15y ago
    I'm not talking permanent. What is different this time is this: a) The transition will happen more quickly because the kind of intelligence you need to clean a room is very broadly applicable. It affects almost all manual tasks at the same time. b) Contrary to earlier transitions, there will not be many tasks left that untrained people can perform and that are similar enough to the old ones. A farmer can go work in a factory. Most cleaners will not become artists and entertainers within their lifetime. I don't think humanity will ever take a permanent vacation. There will always be something that humans want from other humans and there will always be something to exchange as payment.

staunch 15y ago

Facebook and Google have improved the daily lives of billions of people. Tesla Motors' electric car? Very impressive and a lot of promise, but so far all it's done is increase the self-satisfaction of ~1000 people. Look at Star Trek. Other than the spaceship itself the most impressive things are the technology the people use. The Siri-like computer interface, iPad-like computers, Skype-like communications technology, etc.

yirt 15y ago
And yet, Star Trek falls firmly into the social SF camp. The tech is incidental, left abstract or waved away with babble so that the personal interactions can proceed. Obsessing over the latest gadget incarnation wrapped in shiny branding is just the opposite, consumerism rather than tech which quietly enables.
kamaal 15y ago
Facebook and Google have improved the daily lives of billions of people. Tesla Motors' electric car? Very impressive and a lot of promise, but so far all it's done is increase the self-satisfaction of ~1000 people. The same could be told about computer in the 1950's, I am talking about the famous misquote : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_J._Watson#Famous_misquote http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_J._Watson#Famous_misquot... there was a world market for maybe five computers If fossil fuels aren't going drive cars in the future its going to be something else. Fuel cells or Electricity. If IBM had thought or if any body else would have thought how difficult it was to create computing power to derive any meaningful value. We wouldn't be having computers today.
- jarek 15y ago
  > If fossil fuels aren't going drive cars in the future its going to be something else. The other option is we won't have cars.

zem 15y ago

you are vastly underestimating how much email has changed the world. if a better email can do for this generation what email did for the last one, i'll back it against anything on your list for sheer bang for the buck.

jakejake 15y ago

The frightening part is the idea that you would be trying to disrupt seemingly invincible tech companies like google, which would be an insane business plan for a startup looking for a $50k kickstart investment. But, I remember when google was first released. I thought the search engine market was already full with yahoo and alta vista dominating at the time. Who knew?!

tomjen3 15y ago
What is it they say? It seems invincible until it suddenly doesn't any more. But at any count what companies seem like or appear to do doesn't matter to your company. What matters is what they are and what they do. If they seem scary, good, that will only serve to keep others from trying to beat them -> less competitor for you. Now go forth and conquer.
mmcconnell1618 15y ago
Google offered to sell to Alta Vista (for somewhere in the 1-2 million range) if I recall correctly and they were turned down. Sometimes the giants don't see change coming.
- wcarss 15y ago
  It was $1,000,000 to Excite, not Alta Vista. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excite http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excite

mcartyem 15y ago

Maybe it's not as bothersome as it sounds. Donald Knuth said the two biggest problems in Computer Science are searching and sorting.

ahoyhere 15y ago

What about this? "In the developing world, 24,000 children under the age of five die every day from preventable causes like diarrhea contracted from unclean water." - UNICEF That's 54 jumbo jets a day. I also remain unimpressed by the ambition of his list. And by yours.

lutorm 15y ago
They die because they can't afford clean water, so there's no money to be made in solving that problem. Capitalism does not have a heart.
- ahoyhere 15y ago
  No, they die because they are ignorant of sanitation and therefore don't have any. Have you read anything on the subject, or are you just assuming? Secondly, there is certainly money to be made in solving the problem, if you're not a truly lazy thinker who bases his conclusions off what he hears in TV news soundbites: http://www.gizmag.com/go/4418/ http://www.gizmag.com/go/4418/ http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/15/clean-water-at-no-cost-just-add-carbon-credits/ http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/15/clean-water-... http://www.waterforpeople.org/programs/how-we-work/initiatives/sanitation-as-a-business.html http://www.waterforpeople.org/programs/how-we-work/initiativ... http://www.unwater.org/downloads/Sanitationisabusiness.pdf http://www.unwater.org/downloads/Sanitationisabusiness.pdf http://tlc.howstuffworks.com/family/green-inventors-solar-sanitation.htm http://tlc.howstuffworks.com/family/green-inventors-solar-sa... Lastly, I'm sure that TOMS and Warby Parker would be interested to hear that there's no money in helping poor people gain access to shoes or glasses, as well.
  - lutorm 15y ago
    My statement was not meant to be factual but rather indicative of a certain cynicism on my part about what I think the motivations behind people starting (the vast majority) of companies are. Sorry that wasn't clear.
    - 15y ago

icebraining 15y ago

The lunar base and the flying cars are pointless if your goal is to improve people's lives instead of just satisfying egos. And the personal robot is already being worked on, but instead of a single humanoid robot (which I always considered to be a bad approach), they're small and specialized.

pg 15y ago

That was just a selection of ambitious ideas. I didn't mean to imply it was a complete list; I never imagined anyone would think I meant that. I almost added a section on robots, but the talk was already long enough and I figured 7 was enough to illustrate my point that ambitious startup ideas are frightening.

run4yourlives 15y ago
I'm not understanding where you figured my point was that the list was not exhaustive enough; my point was you left out robotics and kept search and email in. Robotics actually, is an area where something huge seems right over the horizon. I'd certainly bet on the next game changer coming from robotics before any equally revolutionary activity comes from search or email. I don't necassarily disagree with what you do say about the two, I just don consider advances in these areas terribly important in the grand scheme of things.
- blueprint 15y ago
  > I just don consider advances in these areas terribly important in the grand scheme of things. What is the grand scheme of things?
- dbul 15y ago
  You, diego, et al. seem to have difficulty coming to terms with the author. It is clear from the article that by "frighteningly ambitious" the author means problems people currently have which seem insane to take on. They are problems people have because the author has indicated that he has them or has discussed with others who have them. Search and email are insane to take on because if you succeed with search, you are decimating a company with market cap in the hundreds of billions; succeeding in email means disrupting one of the original Internet protocols which virtually everyone uses. Thus, these are frighteningly ambitious. You instead see "frighteningly ambitious" and assume your own term which is in the realm of science fiction (cyborgs, personal robots, &c.). Robotics, incidentally, may be a frighteningly ambitious endeavor but only if you are considering something like autonomously scraping and repainting ships or actuation in camera pills: personal (autonomous) robotics won't happen in the near future (see iRobot Corp). So, assuming the author's definition of "frighteningly ambitious", search and email are important because they are problems people have now. If search weren't a problem, Union Square wouldn't have funded DuckDuckGo, and more to the point, DuckDuckGo wouldn't be growing. (I also have the exact problems the author describes with Google -- for the past 2 years I've had a problem with Google.) If it hasn't been shouted by Fred Wilson and Paul Graham enough: they have pain from dealing with email. They would throw their money at you if you offered a way to make email less painful. Maybe instead of spending two hours every day with email they could spend one hour with new/email and they could have a spare hour a day with their kids -- how valuable is an extra 14 whole days a year to these guys? How many people hate spending so much time on email who have means? Probably enough to make it worth investigating the problem. For what its worth, I'm frugal as Franklin and I would actually pay for email (i.e I wouldn't accept any common free email service because they aren't even worth $0.00 to me for a variety of reasons).