Comment by enraged_camel | Hacker News Reader

Comment by enraged_camel | Hacker News Reader

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>>You don't think Google Maps changed the world? Translate, search, etc.?

Did MapQuest change the world?

Did AltaVista or Yahoo!?

What about the thousand translation sites that exited before Google?

I'll tell you who is changing the world. SpaceX. It is led by a man who started it despite all odds. A man whose sole drive is to get humanity to Mars so that if something happens to Earth, it doesn't wipe out our entire species. A man who believes he has a mission, and believes in that mission so strongly that he is willing to invest every last penny of his personal fortune in it, and work himself to death to see it accomplished.

THAT is changing the world. Not being able to look at pictures of a street from your computer or find the translation of a spoken phrase accurately or make payments via your email - all the while being served shitty, mostly useless ads.

I'm sorry, I love Google and the convenience it provides, but at the end of the day, it is just an advertising company. And you cannot change the world with advertising.

It is pieces of the puzzle really. You need machine learning, computer vision, robotics and ultimately AI plus some kind of self-assembling machines to really make it work.

We don't have the tech yet. But it is getting there. Being able to find the translation of a spoken phrase, or answer a spoken question accurately is actually difficult. You pretty much need your phone to be aware of the environment; if you want to get good results that is. So projects like Siri, Google Now or Glass are actually important and potentially can be crucial and 'world changing'.

Except it's e.g. SRI doing the "world changing" part of Siri.

>>Being able to find the translation of a spoken phrase, or answer a spoken question accurately is actually difficult.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that every world-changing problem is difficult to solve, but not every difficult problem is world-changing when solved. I have no doubt that Google engineers overcame countless challenges that would fry the brains of most people here. Does that mean the solutions they produced changed the world? No. Rather, they ended up as products and features in Google's massive advertising machine.

You mentioned other projects. Let's take Google Glass. It is quite promising. But let's face it: at the end of the day, it will be yet another means of showing people ads. They will be more accurate ads perhaps, since Google will know exactly where you are and what you are looking at - but they will still be ads.

I actually saw a demo of live conversation translation between two speakers (Chinese and English) using cell phones, at a Microsoft tech fest a few (2?) years ago. Something from MSR, obviously not on the market yet, so not quite there, but there are lots of people trying to bring the star trek universal translators to life :)

Utter nonsense. Technologies compliment each other. You cannot space launching vehicles without being able to stand on the shoulder of giants. Maps, email, translations are all required for humans to lead good day to day lives. Unrelated but I care two hoots about spaceX and would prefer humanity to end on earth. Heck, they should invest in improving the lives of people living on earth right fucking now like Gates is.

  | he is willing to invest every last penny

Did he not also invest/build Tesla Motors? Let's not overstate things here.

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