A BEAUTIFUL
MIND
already set in motion or others just
around the corner. There are various robotic self-navigating vehicles
that guide tourists through museums, explore abandoned mines,
and assist the elderly. There is the
utopian self-driving car that promises to relieve humanity from the
tedium of commuting while helping reduce emissions, gridlock,
and deaths caused by driver error. There are the “magic” Google
Glasses that allow wearers to instantly share what they see, as
they are seeing it, with anyone
anywhere in the world—with the
blink of an eye. And there is the
free online university Udacity, a
potentially game-changing educational effort that, if Thrun has his
way, will level the playing field for
learners of all stripes.
“While everyone is running
around saying ‘I’m going to do
a better mobile photo thing so I
can defeat Facebook and suck out
more of their market cap to me,’
Sebastian is going around saying,
‘I think driving is totally screwed
up and there should be autonomous cars,’” says venture capitalist George Zachary, an investor in
Udacity. “He thinks much more
boldly about the problems.”
Other observers say all of this
HUFFINGTON
8.19.12
is firmly in the tradition of the best
sort of innovators.
“What’s unique about Sebastian, and all innovators, perhaps,
is that they don’t start with the
current situation and try to make
incrementally better based on
what’s been done in the past.
They look out and say, ‘Given the
current state of technology, what
can I do radically differently to
make a discontinuity—not an incremental change, but put us in a
different place?’” says Dean Kamen, the inventor of the Segway.
“He is a true innovator…And he
has a fantastic vision.”
Many Silicon Valley standouts
have succeeded by making radical improvements to products
that already exist. Facebook, for
example, did social networking
better than any of its predecessors. Smartphones were around
well before the iPhone, but Apple
came up with a gadget far slicker
than the competition.
Thrun likes creating new
things from scratch and invents
for a world that should be, for an
audience that may not yet be out
there, for conditions that may
never be met. “I have a strong
disrespect for authority and for
rules,” he says. “Including gravity. Gravity sucks.”
To that end, and for all of his
bravado, Thrun also says that