Monday, March 30, 2015

Google: "First, kill all the artisans" (GOOG)

From Rough Type:

houses
“The built environment is an $8 trillion per year industry that is still basically artisanal.” So said Astro Teller, head of the Google X research lab, during a speech at South by Southwest last week. Reading that sentence in isolation, you might assume that Teller intended it as praise, that he was was applauding the field of architecture for maintaining its heritage of craftsmanship, skill, and artistry. But you would be wrong. Being “still basically artisanal” is, for Teller, a great flaw. It’s a symptom of both a debilitating lack of software-mediated routinization and a tragic superfluity of quirky human talent. Artisanality is a problem that Google is seeking to solve. One Google X project, Teller explained, is intended “to fix the way buildings are designed and built by building, basically, an expert system, a software Genie if you will, that could take your needs for the building and design the building for you.” By getting all those messy and outmoded artisans out of the picture, replacing them with tidy software algorithms, we’ll be able to avoid the inefficiency and waste that inevitably accompany human effort....MORE
HT: Nextbank's Petervan's Delicacy's who also get a belated tip d'chapeau for "The plot to replace the internet".