Always work hard on something uncomfortably exciting!
I like going to Burning Man, for example. An environment where people can try new things. I think as technologists we should have some safe places where we can try out new things and figure out the effect on society. What's the effect on people, without having to deploy it to the whole world.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Larry Page emphasizes the importance of experimenting in safe environments to understand the impact of technology on society.
In this quote, Larry Page highlights the value of experimental spaces, like Burning Man, where individuals, particularly technologists, can explore new ideas without the pressures of immediate real-world consequences. He advocates for creating safe environments for innovation, promoting the idea that understanding the societal effects of technology is crucial before introducing it widely. This approach allows us to learn from failures and successes in controlled settings, ultimately leading to more thoughtful and responsible technological advancements.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
During a tech conference, to support the idea of safe spaces for innovation.
More from Larry Page
All quotes →Technology should do the hard work, so you can get on and live your life. We're only at one percent of what's possible, and we're moving slow relative to the opportunity we have.
Lots of companies don’t succeed over time. What do they fundamentally do wrong? They usually miss the future. I try to focus on that: What is the future really going to be? And how do we create it? And how do we power our organization to really focus on that and really drive it at a high rate? When I was working on Android, I felt guilty. It wasn’t what we were working on, it was a start-up, and I felt guilty. That was stupid! It was the future.
Always deliver more than expected.
You don't need to have a 100-person company to develop that idea.
Excellence matters, and technology advances so fast that the potential for improvement is tremendous. So, since becoming CEO again, I've pushed hard to increase our velocity, improve our execution, and focus on the big bets that will make a difference in the world.
Similar quotes
Wherever technology reaches its real fulfillment, it transcends into architecture.
The new source of power is not money in the hands of a few, but information in the hands of many.
Google, Microsoft and Yahoo should be developing new technologies to bypass government sensors and barriers to the Internet; but instead, they agreed to guard the gates themselves.
We're losing track of the vastness of the potential for computer science. We really have to revive the beautiful intellectual joy of it, as opposed to the business potential.
Ugly programs are like ugly suspension bridges: they're much more liable to collapse than pretty ones, because the way humans (especially engineer-humans) perceive beauty is intimately related to our ability to process and understand complexity. A language that makes it hard to write elegant code makes it hard to write good code.
It is unworthy of excellent men to lose hours like slaves in the labor of calculation which could be relegated to anyone else if machines were used.