Applied Engineering, Not Fiddling Around in the Lab, Delivers
August 12, 2009
Ars Technica has added a dash of whimsy to its article line up. Consider “Weird Science Sees the Eureka Moments Are for the Birds.” A “eureka” moment refers to the story that Archimedes had an idea whilst lounging in his bath. He then ran down the “street”, allegedly naked, repeating “Eureka.” This is the same fellow who would not follow orders and was killed.
Ars Technica’s John Timmer reported a research report about birds solving a problem via tool use:
As the authors describe it, “We presented four captive rooks with a problem analogous to Aesop’s fable: raising the level of water so that a floating worm moved into reach. All four subjects solved the problem with an appreciation of precisely how many stones were needed.”
When I read this, I thought about the Google. The company has an applied engineering side and a provision for some Googlers to fool around in their spare time at work. The notion of one day a week to pursue pursuits may have been crushed by the peer pressure, but that too is a good myth. Microsoft has a significant commitment to R&D as well. I am not sure what the balance between applied and pure research is at either Google or Microsoft.
Based on the reading I have been doing, Google seems to be more like crows. The engineers bang away at a problem until a result yields data. Google then wallows in the data and follows the washing machine instructions on my mother’s Whirlpool. Wash, rinse, repeat.
Google reminds me of these crows. Microsoft? I don’t have an opinion. I will form one when I see the fruits of the R&D applied to Fast ESP and the Yahoo search technology. Both of these are Microsoft acquisitions and both will be applied engineering problems. Another lab experiment which is almost as important at Rupert Murdoch’s “charging for news” experiment.
Stephen Arnold, August 11, 2009
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