Google 'Solve For X' Website Goes Live

alphadogg writes "Google on Monday released a website and video regarding its Solve for X project, which the company says is 'a place where the curious can go to hear and discuss radical technology ideas for solving global problems.' It's got a TED-like think tank feel to it, but possibly with oodles of Google resources behind it. It appears related to Google's up-to-now largely secretive Google X research lab that the New York Times recently shed some light on."

I'm surprised

[Anonymous Coward]

Google is going in the wrong direction with the science-fictiony robots. The future is in increased communications, more efficient use of physical resources and ultimately understanding and hacking the human brain.

Re:We need a new Bell Labs

[Anonymous Coward]

But Bell Labs wasn't a "corporate lab" in quite that since, since it was run by a company with a government-granted monopoly.

Re:So, the question everyone is asking is:

[demonbug]

The question everyone is probably asking themselves is "what countries is this censored in?".

More to the point, "How can we leverage the massive potential of the internet to improve communication and erode the power of regimes built on fear and ignorance when even the most trusted tech companies seem eager to roll over for every authoritarian whim promulgated by a developing market?"

Lots of solutions already, they are just ignored

[Paul Fernhout]

In the video they asked for the cure for cancer, and it turns out most cancer can be prevented with adequate vitamin D, eating lots of vegetables, and avoiding some lifestyle risks.

Global warming can be dealt with by renewables and probably LENR (cold fusion) and if all else fails, Thorium power (but it is not clear it is all from fossil fuels as much may have come from topsoil destruction by poor farming practices, or that global warming is entirely a bad thing compared to delaying a next ice age).

Massive unemployment can be dealt with through a "basic income", an expanded gift economy, improved subsistence technologies like 3D printing and home gardening robots, and/or by better participatory planning at all levels of government.

The biggest issue Google, like the rest of us, needs to wrestle with is the one in my sig below -- the irony of technologies of abundance being used to fight over perceived scarcity, or worse, to create artificial scarcity.