Skunk Works

A recent article in the Times took a look at Google X, Google’s hush-hush advanced-projects lab.

It’s a place where your refrigerator could be connected to the Internet, so it could order groceries when they ran low. Your dinner plate could post to a social network what you’re eating. Your robot could go to the office while you stay home in your pajamas. And you could, perhaps, take an elevator to outer space.

These are just a few of the dreams being chased at Google X, the clandestine lab where Google is tackling a list of 100 shoot-for-the-stars ideas. In interviews, a dozen people discussed the list; some work at the lab or elsewhere at Google, and some have been briefed on the project. But none would speak for attribution because Google is so secretive about the effort that many employees do not even know the lab exists.

I’d be mighty curious to know what they’ve got in the pipeline. Might have to call upon some of our deep-cover operatives…

6 Comments

  1. At your service, sah!

    Posted November 23, 2011 at 12:34 pm | Permalink
  2. Malcolm says

    Awww…

    Thanks, Kevin, but I was kinda thinking of some people who actually work at Google, or some others who have their fingers in various Silicon Valley pies, etc…

    I certainly do appreciate your team spirit, though, and we’ll be most grateful for anything you can turn up, of course.

    Posted November 23, 2011 at 1:10 pm | Permalink
  3. Sorry — I was in a cartoonish mood when I wrote the above. Never seriously thought of myself as a deep-cover operative, but was seized by the image of any number of movies in which a British officer stamps forward from the line and snaps a rigid salute while loudly offering his sahvices, sah!

    (Of course, I may be missing the fact that your reply was meant in an equally tongue-in-cheek manner…)

    Posted November 23, 2011 at 1:25 pm | Permalink
  4. Malcolm says

    I do love that Sandhurst accent. An English record producer with an ear for accents once gave me a tip to getting it right. The example he gave was the greeting “Oh, hello there” — the key to correct pronunciation being to imagine it as written “Air, hair-lair, there…”

    Posted November 23, 2011 at 1:48 pm | Permalink
  5. Malcolm was obviously thinking of me, Kevin, but my lips are seals!

    They go “Urk, urk!” So . . . you won’t get much useful out of them.

    Jeffery Hodges

    * * *

    Posted November 23, 2011 at 4:46 pm | Permalink
  6. the one eyed man says

    “Air, hair-lair, there…”

    The equivalent in Alabama: Har Yew?

    Posted November 23, 2011 at 6:31 pm | Permalink

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