
Hey Google, What's a Moonshot?: How Silicon Valley Mocks Apollo - taeric
https://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2019/1/233518-hey-google-whats-a-moonshot/fulltext
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taeric
Hoping to hear a lot of others thoughts on this article. Had fun reading it
last weekend. I think the standout, to me can be seen in this excerpt.

    
    
        One cannot plan out a schedule that depends on 
        fundamental scientific breakthroughs, since those 
        do not occur on a fixed timescale. A project of 
        that kind is about spending money to mitigate risk,
        by pushing existing technologies to levels of 
        performance, reliability, or miniaturization that 
        would not otherwise be economically practical. 
        Given a choice of two technologically workable 
        ways to do something, NASA would take the 
        better-proven and more expensive way.
    

That last point, in particular, is one I have trouble with time and again.
Picking tried frameworks seems to be something our industry is allergic to.
But I cannot seem to understand why.

I get it at the hobbyist level. Playing with new things is awesome. There is
also at the "failure is an option" level. If you are just going to go swing as
hard as you can, then by all means pick the latest in the hope it lets you
knock it out of the park.

If you need to know that what you are going to do will work, though, pick a
framework with known qualities and spend the money necessary to mitigate the
known failure points.

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partingshots
The author paints a picture of a world of absolutes, of only black and white.
I tend to see from experience that a vast grey area exists in the definition
of what it means to “innovate”.

Instead of putting down and sneering at Alphabet’s attempt to build and
create, why not try to offer some constructive feedback instead if you believe
what they’re doing really is so flawed. This pessimism and cynicism that seems
to emanate towards those who attempt to take risks and try new things always
has greatly perplexed me.

~~~
taeric
I think the suggestions were essentially not to conflate "moonshots" with
innovations. If you are planning big things, you can't do that around
scientific innovation. Those don't happen on schedule. Instead, big things are
done by pushing the limits of what you know. Some innovations _may_ come out
of them, but they were not accounted for in the planning.

That is, it wasn't sneering at the attempt to build and create, per se. But it
was saying that this is not at all the same as what the Apollo missions were.
There are some hints at similarities, but by and large, they did go against
much of the idea of incremental innovations.

So, are they impressive? Yes. Absolutely. Fun even. But if you are going to
set your sights on something big, you will have to spend an absurd amount of
money. Near bankrupting levels of it, for most people.

Similarly, if you want to succeed, you can't bank on innovations. Eventually,
you'll fail to hit an innovation and will be in trouble. Instead, spend the
effort to mitigate known failures and build towards milestones.

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sidibe
Serious question how many other corporations spent billions of dollars for
over a decade on a technology that people still aren't very confident will
work like Google has been doing with self driving cars? I know utilities and
aircraft manufacturers have made bigger investments but with much surer
returns.

~~~
taeric
Has Google spent billions on self driving cars? And, car manufacturers are
still spending a ton of money into the same problem space.

Google does have R&D. It is just amusing to see that they made a division that
they tried to give a new name to, that isn't living up to what they named it
after. (At least, that is the point I got from the article.)

