Always work hard on something uncomfortably exciting!
Larry PageRead
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.
Interpretation
Technology is meant to enhance our lives by handling difficult tasks, allowing us to focus on living more fully.
In this quote, Larry Page emphasizes the role of technology in improving our quality of life by taking care of laborious tasks. He suggests that we are just beginning to explore the vast potential of technological advancements, implying that there is much more to achieve that can significantly benefit humanity.
In practice
In a speech about future innovations, you might say this quote to inspire others about the role of technology.
Always work hard on something uncomfortably exciting!
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.
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.
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.
I often tell my students not to be misled by the name 'artificial intelligence' - there is nothing artificial about it. AI is made by humans, intended to behave by humans, and, ultimately, to impact humans' lives and human society.
The programmer, like the poet, works only slightly removed from pure thought-stuff. He builds his castles in the air, from air, creating by exertion of the imagination. Few media of creation are so flexible, so easy to polish and rework, so readily capable of realizing grand conceptual structures.
Simple things should be simple and complex things should be possible.
Technological society has succeeded in multiplying the opportunities for pleasure, but it has great difficulty in generating joy.
Time’ has ceased, 'space' has vanished. We now live in a global village... a simultaneous happening
I love what the Valley does. I love company building. I love startups. I love technology companies. I love new technology. I love this process of invention. Being able to participate in that as a founder and a product creator, or as an investor or a board member, I just find that hugely satisfying.
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