Inside Google X, The New Bell Labs

Note to Self

WNYC Studios

Self-improvement, Tech, Note, Npr, Education, Public, Wnyc, Manoush, York, To, New, Self, Radio, Business, Technology, Relationships, City, Society & Culture, Zomorodi, Newtechcity

4.7 • 2.7K Ratings

🗓️ 16 April 2014

⏱️ 17 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

For the first time ever, Google has let a journalist into the secretive Google X labs where an eccentric team of big thinkers is hatching plans for the technology of tomorrow. We're talking about hoverboards, a space elevator and floating Wi-Fi hot spots for the developing world.

The company talks a big game about chasing these "moonshot" ideas that could improve billions of lives. It's fanciful, it's ambitious, and it's a whole lot like AT&T's Bell Labs of a half-century ago. That iconic corporate research program brought us inventions — from the transistor to the computer coding language C — that form the backbone of just about every electronic device we touch. So we ask, can Google possibly pick up the torch? Well, maybe so.

In this episode, we consider if the conditions are right for the dawn of a new golden age of corporate invention. To help us along, researchers at Google X open up about their process, we consult archival tape from AT&T, and chat with Fast Company's Jon Gertner, the first journalist to visit Google X and author of the "The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation."

For more Google X inside info, check out Jon's story in Fast Company or watch the video below that follows the X team through a day in the life of a wild idea. And if you like this New Tech City episode, why not subscribe to the podcast, or follow us on Twitter.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello friend, this is an episode of Note to Self, but from when we used to be called New
0:05.8	Tech City.
0:07.2	Same good content, just the old name.
0:09.4	Enjoy.
0:10.4	Hi, I'm a new Samarote and you're listening to New Tech City, the show that looks at how
0:15.4	technology is changing the way we live.
0:18.7	And today you are in for a treat, a visit to a place where your future is being rethought.
0:26.3	But first, let's move a little more to this training video for Bell Labs from 1973.
0:32.6	Occupying the entire first floor of building three at the Home Dell Laboratories, the computer
0:37.6	center requires some 20,000 square feet of space to house its equipment and peripheral
0:42.9	services.
0:43.9	Bell Labs was where a new age of communication technology dawned.
0:48.5	Computer coding languages were developed there that are still used today.
0:52.1	We heard about that heartbeat bug recently, while that coding language C came from Bell
0:57.6	Labs.
0:58.6	The main computer which is used for Batchwork is the IBM 370 Model 165 with three million
1:05.4	bytes of core, two million of which are available for programmer use.
1:09.7	Intellectuals and scientists gathered on various campuses across the state of New Jersey
1:15.2	to utterly upend how we connect.
1:18.1	Bell Laboratories was really kind of the great laboratory of the 20th century.
1:22.3	John Gertner is editor at large for fast company and he wrote the book on Bell Labs called
1:27.6	the Idea Factory.
	...

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