Technology: Friend or Foe? (Ironically from a Google blog)

If you've been watching HBO's Silicone Valley, or even Veep, you've seen just how far software giants' heads are planted up their own ass holes. To put it more diplomatically, for all the useful interfaces and gadgets they provide us with, countless R&D is invested in technologies that prove just how out of touch the Silicone Valley is with the rest of the planet. So out of touch, in fact, that a Stanford lecturer on the subject, Balaji Srinivasan suggested secession from the United States.

Don't let their hip campuses, nap rooms, and socially liberal ideologies fool you. Companies like Google and Apple are every bit as Red as the Reddest, steak chomping oil company.

While advances in technology look good on paper (or in the Cloud), many of which make daily life simpler, information technology is not an altruistic industry. Try to imagine a world before the internet, before cell phones, a world not long ago. Impossible, right? We need these technologies. Silicone Valley has convinced the world that the era before the internet - let's call it "B.I." - was an archaic one akin to a time before automobiles and vaccinations. And in a way it is, because the sycophants lining up for the next iPhone can't imagine life without 4G tethered to their wrist.

I'll tell you what it was like: We made plans. Relationships didn't end via text message. And we knew how to drive with three pedals. And that's where this rant is leading me.

Google's driverless car.

There was a time when no one dared enter the American car industry without a fear of being hostilely taken over, indicted, or dead. Tesla Motors, and the Big Three's engineered incompetence, changed the face of that industry. 

Let's get the superficial out of the way first. Google's driverless car looks like a castrated Disney cartoon, which shouldn't be possible. I don't know what it is with tech-savvy car buyers and their affinity for vehicular eunuchs, but I'd be more inclined to get behind the wheel of a hybrid if every model didn't make it look like my testicles had retreated up inside my body. Don't get me wrong, I'm a tree-hugging liberal, but when it comes to my cars, I'm red meat and scotch. 

But the Google-mobile isn't just ugly, it's disconnected with its market, and even its purpose. It's one thing to relax behind the dashboard of a virtual chauffeur on Interstate 5 or the wide lanes of suburban San Francisco, but try to imagine Google maps navigating the small streets of Philadelphia, New Orleans, or London. Sure, the technology is still being perfected, and in all likelihood, will be. The bigger question is, why?

Is driving such a chore? Maybe to some, but to others it's a privilege and a thrill. When Porsche perfected the automatic transmission and did away with its manual gearbox, they learned that the world's most sought after performance machine was no longer so sought after, and quickly introduced an optional seven-speed. Automotive purists want to be engaged, and there are a lot of us. And nothing is less engaging than a car that drives itself. 

In some capacity, Google's driverless car is going to happen, that's a fact. What remains to be seen is its impact on our ability, even our right, to drive ourselves. Like the automatic transmission, will satellite GPS and remote driving become so perfected that it renders human error a liability. Technology is already encroaching on the manual driving experience through rearview cameras, alerts, and even Progressive's interface that tracks your every move to offer discounts for safe driving. I drove a car last weekend with the technology installed, and Flo screamed at me every time I hit the breaks or made a sharp Ponono turn. A noble endeavor on paper, but when will in-cabin driver surveillance be mandatory? And when will insurance companies not use that data to offer discounts, but to increase rates?

At the end of the day, the automobile is only 140 years old, and a practical one is less than 100. A shift was inevitable, and the inevitability would inevitably come from the Silicone Valley.  But the key point remains: this new technology is not about improving the quality of life, our personal enjoyment, or basic need, but rather fabricating a need that doesn't exist to make us ever more reliant on the technology coming off the Digital Coast. 

Technology - whether it's the telegraph or the internet - is intrinsically fascinating to the human mind, which puts its heads in an extremely opportunistic position. Today it's a modest, driverless car, but tomorrow it will be a visual search engine that can find every awful photograph of you that's ever ended up on the internet. Technology is our friend until it isn't. The car rendered the train useless by the 1960s and smartphones killed conversation in the early 21st Century. What fallout awaits the next great leap in technology?

Comcast, the CITC, and its place in Information Technology

In all the excitement surrounding Comcast's Innovation and Technology Center, it's easy to gloss over Comcast's original Center and regard it as old news. But the CITC's development, and what it means for Philadelphia, is more than just one tall tower that will outrank the likes of Atlanta and Los Angeles, it is also part of Comcast's sum total.

On its own, Comcast Center redefined Philadelphia's notion of Center City skyscrapers. With the exception of its northern neighbor, the Bell Atlantic or Verizon tower, Philadelphia's humble portfolio of true skyscrapers hug their sidewalks. On one block that could have easily housed Comcast's entire vertical campus, the cable giant decided to create a spectacle. Using a could-be footprint for another tower, Comcast opted for a grand plaza that breaks up the towering monotony of JFK Boulevard by creating a vantage point from which to admire Robert A. M. Stern's local masterpiece. 

In a lot of ways, the theory echoes Mies van der Rohe's Seagram Building in Midtown Manhattan. As height restrictions led New York developers to step their skyscrapers back from the sidewalk in an effort to maximize every square foot, Mies van der Rohe decided to make a statement by "wasting" land on a plaza and designing a completely vertical skyscraper. 

Likewise, Comcast's plaza makes its Center both humbling and intimidating, and in providing both, likely achieved the company's goal. It's easy to wonder why the CITC isn't a bit taller. Why is the roof shorter than Comcast Center? Why does the spire face west, and not the campus's core? They may seem irrelevant questions, but no one spends $1B on a building without analyzing every last detail.

Were the CITC taller, if its spire faced Comcast's plaza, its presence might overpower Comcast's corporate headquarters. Despite its academic rank as Pennsylvania's tallest building, the CITC is still second to Comcast Center and its plaza. 

As the sum total stands, Comcast's vertical campus will be Philadelphia's best planned corporate park, at least in the West Market vicinity. With the exception of Independence Hall, the University of Pennsylvania's historic core, and a handful of other 18th and 19th Century projects, Comcast has set a new bar for future development. 

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However, what works aesthetically may not prove so practical, and it all hinges on Comcast's true plan for the CITC. As it is, Comcast is a telecom corporation, with only a very new and relatively small investment in information technology. IT companies throughout the Silicone Valley, the Cascade Valley, and the Dulles Corridor are comprised of sprawling campuses that look like high-tech universities. 

While many of these corporations decided to set up shop in the suburbs for financial reasons, the reasons they've stayed are logistic. It's not as though Apple, Microsoft, and Intel can't afford to build their own vertical campuses in San Francisco, Seattle, or Portland, it's that they don't want to. And for good reason. 

Apple's upcoming Concordia campus

Comcast, despite its apparent desire to delve into IT, is still every bit as corporate as JP Morgan. Although Big Software plays the corporate game on the same trading room floor, their philosophy, operations, and corporate demographics are at odds with Comcast's 52 year old model.

The free spirited software geeks tethered to their iPads and laptops aren't tethered to their cubicles. IT's endless string of meetings is less the end result of corporate bureaucracy, but a place for collaboration and productive innovation. The IT campus is very much a hive, not a hierarchy of elevator banks that reserve the uppermost floors for a select few. 

It will be interesting to see not only how Comcast fares in the unfamiliar world of information technology, but also how its vertical campus manages to support it. If it works, the CITC and Philadelphia will change the industry's game, proving that software and innovation can accommodate fixie saddled Millennials unwilling to commute or relocate to the Silicone Valley or King of Prussia. But Comcast's foray into innovation needs to be more than a building, a concept, and a vertical theory. First and foremost it needs to understand innovation, why software empires succeed, and why so many more come and go overnight. 

Information Technology is not an industry that survives on the status quo. It is the modern and global embodiment of the first 40 years of the automotive industry. It's a technological revolution that refuses to peak. Profitable Big Software doesn't succeed through mergers and acquisitions, those are simply the end results of successes and failures. Comcast can't buy its way into Information Technology, rather it needs to understand that companies like Apple and Google thrive by way of true innovation and a market that continues to crave the next best thing. 

The Future Is Coming

This summer, Philadelphia will join Shanghai, Sao Paulo, and Paris as the only North American city to host Saint-Gobain's Future Sensations, a traveling exposition celebrating the materials company's 350 year anniversary. With five pavilions, one designed exclusively for Philadelphia, Future Sensations focuses on science, storytelling, and art.

That's gonna look pretty sexy on Eakins Oval (image from Uwishunu.com).

Saint-Gobain's North American headquarters are located in Philadelphia, so the city was an obvious choice. But don't confuse the tour with an event on par with a traveling convention. Saint-Gobain is impressive. With Philadelphia quickly becoming a technologies hub, this event becomes even more significant. Industry leaders will be visiting for the pavilions on Eakins Oval, but will linger to consider the city's place in the field, Comcast's sweeping influence, and other innovative companies that have opted for Philadelphia over the Silicone and Cascade Valleys. 

So, yeah, we're kind of a big deal right now.