How the Topos Institute tackles problems in complex systems| www.freaktakes.com
Three variables that mark key regime changes in ARPA history| www.freaktakes.com
ARPA's early decades of success have made the ARPA model iconic.| www.freaktakes.com
Alternative Title — How to optimally build at the top: the case for BBN-model orgs| www.freaktakes.com
And Many Stories About the Maleffects of Bureaucracy on R&D| www.freaktakes.com
Today’s piece was put together with the help of several conversations with Answer.AI co-founder Jeremy Howard. It is not a “traditional” FreakTakes piece; the research and advice are much more tailored to a specific group of individuals than usual. However, I was excited to share it on the Substack for those curious to know more about| www.freaktakes.com
Listen now | The centerpiece of today’s post is an extensive interview with Chuck Thorpe. Thorpe, now President of Clarkson University, spent over two decades at Carnegie Mellon University. These years were largely spent as a student, project manager, and PI working on Carnegie Mellon’s autonomous vehicle vision research. The primary goal of the interview was to better understand how he and others managed systems contracts at CMU — CMU had a strong comparative advantage in this style of...| www.freaktakes.com
We’ve all heard that “DARPA invented the Internet.” But few have heard of BBN, the contractor that did the most work to bring the ARPAnet into existence. Today’s piece dives into the history of BBN and the firm’s unique structure. A firm like BBN winning the main portion of the ARPAnet project was a pivotal reason the ARPAnet project went so smoothly. BBN embodied the “| www.freaktakes.com