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I rather assumed the tech transfer for this went in the opposite direction: that a reason Google, and Microsoft, and Apple were developing, and providing for fr

I rather assumed the tech transfer for this went in the opposite direction: that a reason Google, and Microsoft, and Apple were developing, and providing for free, voice recognition on consumer devices was that they wanted to get the technology to a point where they could sell, or license, it to the NSA.

lern_too_spel 11y ago
That's a very strange way of looking at it. Those companies would want to sell such a service or product to anybody and everybody, including the NSA. You might as well say that the reason Dole grows pineapples is that they want to sell those pineapples to the NSA.
- 6d0debc071 11y ago
  A reason, not the reason. I don't imagine these companies discount the sort of money that the NSA seems willing to throw at these sorts of problems. A sum that will not be gained from what is, given the quality of the microphones and the maturity of the algorithms, a novelty item in other respects at the moment. If the technology matures, yeah, you'd want to sell it to everyone. (Actually you'd want to sell different forms of the technology to everyone, or at least different licenses, so that you could bleed them of as much money as possible.) But in its current form, and perhaps for some years after depending on how much of an edge you'd think it gave you in the market, you'd want to sell to rich customers who have a strategic interest in the technology and can give you some sort of decent return on your development costs.
- partisan 11y ago
  You could use that analogy, but only if the NSA really really liked pineapples. They really really like spying on people and therefore like the technologies that allow them to do so. And they have a lot of money and power that would appeal to a company that might want to dabble in the gray areas of legality with regards to privacy. You might argue that Facebook works to perfect facial recognition and identification technologies to sell them to the NSA, along with that nice full database of people and their pictures. That would make more sense than pineapples.
  - lifeisstillgood 11y ago
    I think the pineapple thing could be a major insight. After Microsoft, the NSA's famous mission statement was to put a pineapple on every desk. The DoD explicitly want to "deter war and provide security for our pineapples" and NASA infamously put a test pineapple into space in 1963, long before a test pilot. Of course we must not forget the clearest endorsement of pineapple in American Life, in the most famous text of all, where Jefferson (himself secretly addicted to its juices) said "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Pineapples"

lern_too_spel 11y ago

That's a very strange way of looking at it. Those companies would want to sell such a service or product to anybody and everybody, including the NSA. You might as well say that the reason Dole grows pineapples is that they want to sell those pineapples to the NSA.

6d0debc071 11y ago
A reason, not the reason. I don't imagine these companies discount the sort of money that the NSA seems willing to throw at these sorts of problems. A sum that will not be gained from what is, given the quality of the microphones and the maturity of the algorithms, a novelty item in other respects at the moment. If the technology matures, yeah, you'd want to sell it to everyone. (Actually you'd want to sell different forms of the technology to everyone, or at least different licenses, so that you could bleed them of as much money as possible.) But in its current form, and perhaps for some years after depending on how much of an edge you'd think it gave you in the market, you'd want to sell to rich customers who have a strategic interest in the technology and can give you some sort of decent return on your development costs.
partisan 11y ago
You could use that analogy, but only if the NSA really really liked pineapples. They really really like spying on people and therefore like the technologies that allow them to do so. And they have a lot of money and power that would appeal to a company that might want to dabble in the gray areas of legality with regards to privacy. You might argue that Facebook works to perfect facial recognition and identification technologies to sell them to the NSA, along with that nice full database of people and their pictures. That would make more sense than pineapples.
- lifeisstillgood 11y ago
  I think the pineapple thing could be a major insight. After Microsoft, the NSA's famous mission statement was to put a pineapple on every desk. The DoD explicitly want to "deter war and provide security for our pineapples" and NASA infamously put a test pineapple into space in 1963, long before a test pilot. Of course we must not forget the clearest endorsement of pineapple in American Life, in the most famous text of all, where Jefferson (himself secretly addicted to its juices) said "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Pineapples"