Pluralistic: 07 Oct 2022 "Don't spy on a privacy lab," and other career advice for university provosts


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Pluralistic: 03 Oct 2022 An antitrust murder whodunnit


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The True Genius of Tech Leaders

Capital, NotĀ Vision.

A humanoid figure standing to the fore of a TED stage; he wears Steve Jobsā€™s signature turtleneck and bluejeans, but he is also wearing clown shoes. His head has been replaced by a donkeyā€™s head.
in pastel and lKlearchos Kapoutsis/CC BY 2.0 (modified); Ben Stanfield/CC BY-SA 2.0 (modified)

When itā€™s railroading time, you get railroads. ā€œInnovationā€ is the intersection of collage and timing. For hundreds of years, people observed the action of a screw-press and the motion of a twirling maple-key, and invented the helicopter:

A woodcut engraving of a screw-press, a plus sign, an engraving of a spinning maple key, an equals sign, DaVinciā€™s drawing of a helicopter.

But of course, they didnā€™t invent the helicopter! No one invented the helicopter, until someone else had invented new lightweight alloys, as well as fossil fuel refining techniques, as well as internal combustion engines:

A woodcut engraving of a screw-press, a plus sign, an engraving of a spinning maple key, a plus sign, a carbon fiber molecule, a plus sign, an oil well, a plus sign, an internal combustion engine, an equals sign, DaVinciā€™s drawing of a helicopter.

Once all those factors were in place, lots of people independently invented the helicopter. Same goes for TV, radio, and many other inventions. When itā€™s railroading time, you get railroads. It takes some creativity to invent the railroad, but creativity is an abundant element in the human condition. Creativity doesnā€™t get you anything until other people have build the substrate for your invention.

What we take for singular vision is best understood as lucky timing. Receiving the patent for the radio doesnā€™t mean you and you alone could invent the radioā€Šā€”ā€Šit means you lucked into being alive when all the underlying technologies were in place, and you beat everyone else with the ability to invent radio to the patent office by a minute or two.

The Good Timing Theory of Innovation explains a lot about the successes and failures of the heavily mythologized tech founders and the companies they run. It explains how Google could launch such as fantastic search-engine and then launch a string of failed products, from G+ to Google Video to Stadia. Googleā€™s success stories (its ad-tech stack, its mobile platform, its collaborative office suite, its server-management tech, its video platformā€¦) are all acquisitions.

Besides search, Googleā€™s only had two other in-house successes: they made a great Hotmail clone (Gmail), and they got more than a billion people to use Google Photos (but only by bundling it with Android, a mobile operating system they bought from someone else).

Google didnā€™t invent its way to gloryā€Šā€”ā€Šit bought its way there.

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Pluralistic: 01 Oct 2022 How Palantir will steal the NHS


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