
Google’s Monastic Vision for the Future of Work - jeo1234
http://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/googles-monastic-vision-for-the-future-of-work?intcid=mod-latest
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deleted_account
Does anyone else consider these massive corporate arcologies short sighted? I
mean, they're literally walling themselves off from the community under
gigantic glass domes, an absurd design given the peninsula's mild
Mediterranean climate.

Couldn't they consider something more, I don't know, _permeable_?

Though I have to admit the cyberpunk in me relishes the day we have smooth,
windowless Googlecars shuttling 'plexmonks through automated checkpoints
guarded by robotic Brinhounds.

~~~
icebraining
As someone who lives in a Mediterranean climate, I certainly wouldn't have
minded a dome over the college campus I attended. There's nothing fun about
having to walk under intense rain between buildings, whose floors get all
muddy if you have any kind of walkable grass.

And I don't see what it has to do with their connection to the community;
after all, people don't exactly come flying in. Whether the campus will have
outside visitors will have more to do with their policies (free or restricted
entry, presence of public amenities, etc) than with the dome, in my opinion.

~~~
seanp2k2
It really doesn't rain much at all:
[http://www.usclimatedata.com/climate/mountain-
view/californi...](http://www.usclimatedata.com/climate/mountain-
view/california/united-states/usca1946)

~~~
S4M
The thing is that while it doesn't rain that much, when it does it rains
really hard.

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eli_gottlieb
You know, we used to have institutions for well-paid knowledge workers to
cloister themselves from outside concerns and devote themselves to work. We
called them "universities".

~~~
DanAndersen
It really is a shame that modern academia has broken the promise of what it
used to be, and what it still (often falsely) claims to be. With so many
prospective academics and so few tenured positions, academia becomes a
cutthroat fight to accumulate more publications at whatever cost in order to
build up one's career. Lack of funding sources leads to many people fighting
over a shrinking piece of the pie. Those who are funding give initial funding
to multiple groups with the goal of continuing funding whoever is most
impressive -- everyone wants a good return on their investment. As a result,
there's a tendency to only focus on the next progress report, focusing on
short term results that are visible and can get media attention. This leads to
a focus on salesmanship and less on actually figuring things out.

Academia had a specific set of pros and cons that made it a distinct entity
from industry. As time as passed, academia has been taking on more and more of
the cons of industry (focus on short-term thinking) without taking on the pros
of industry (higher pay).

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nextos
Exactly, many modern universities (even top 10 ones) are sadly quite broken.
Extremely inefficient usage of funds, loads of bureaucrats for no good reason,
and loads of people that just optimize for number of papers. These tend to
stick around doing politics to get their names well-placed in the paper du
jour, despite not having done much for it.

Math, and to a lesser extent physics & CS departments are less broken. But
applied sciences places where I have been tend to be a trainwreck.

~~~
douche
Bureaucracy, specifically the political-correctness-supporting bureaucracy is
out of control in the Ivy League.

~~~
ams6110
It is pretty much everywhere.

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douche
It sounds like Mountain View is being a huge pain in the ass... Maybe it's
because I grew up in a redneck area that had no zoning or building codes, but
the idea that the government can tell you that you can't build what you want
on property that you own is infuriating.

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johansch
California seems like paradise for NIMBY:ers.

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dragonwriter
Parts of California, e.g., the Bay Area, have quite large concentrations of
people who are secure enough in tgeir basic immediate needs to focus energy on
more peripheral and/or longer-term concerns. NIMBY concerns are one of many
such things.

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LogicFailsMe
All that comes to mind is "Larry-5 report to Carousel."

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jacques_chester
I'm reminded of the observation that when a company declares a plan to build a
giant, glorious new headquarters, it is time to sell your shares of that
company.

The theory being that it marks an outbreak of hubris and will distract the
upper management for years.

~~~
patmcguire
I don't know if the theory explained the mechanism behind it, merely the
correlation. There's simple regression to the mean, or the fact that you have
to achieve a certain level of success to build one of these glorious
headquarters, and that seems to be around the natural limit for company size.

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olivermarks
Oracle's hard drive styling of their silicon valley hq on Ralston road looks
very dated now...suspect the google architecture will look very odd in 20
years time

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seanp2k2
Eh, I think many people still get that it's the "database" icon.
[http://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/31784/what-is-the-
orig...](http://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/31784/what-is-the-origin-
meaning-of-the-icon-used-for-database)

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gamesbrainiac
This is eerily similar to what Cadbury did for its workers and employees.

