The Spotify version of today’s episode can be found at this link.| www.freaktakes.com
The Spotify version of today’s episode can be found at this link.| FreakTakes
The full transcript accompanying today’s interview, for those who just want to read the interview, not watch/listen to it| www.freaktakes.com
Where I discuss Bell Labs systems engineers, giving away $100 million like Warren Weaver, and more.| www.freaktakes.com
How the Topos Institute tackles problems in complex systems| www.freaktakes.com
An applied research shop becomes a bit more applied| 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
DARPA's varied approaches to developing early parallel computers| 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
Don Swanson’s career started on a path familiar to many who read this blog. A BA in Physics from CalTech in 1945. A Ph.D. in Theoretical Physics from UC Berkeley in 1952. A decade working in scientific labs. Then his career took a turn when, after a decade of working in traditional scientific labs, Don took a professorship in the Graduate School of Library Science at the University of Chicago. For those keeping track, Don is the first Professor of Library Science mentioned on FreakTakes. Bu...| www.freaktakes.com
What was it truly like inside the great man's lab?| www.freaktakes.com
Alternative Title: Why all applied research organizations should hire a Bell-style systems engineer| www.freaktakes.com
This piece is noticeably longer (twice the length) than the others on this Substack.| www.freaktakes.com
Three North Star Applications Projects from DARPA's Strategic Computing Portfolio| www.freaktakes.com
This piece is an accompaniment to today’s MOSIS piece. So please read the MOSIS piece before starting this one. Pattern Language Tags: Promoting a coordination/service mechanism to reduce material costs and increase research feedback cycles Introduction| www.freaktakes.com
I’ve taken to calling the pieces I write for FreakTakes “administrative histories.” The reason I opted for that name instead of “progress studies histories” or “metascience histories” is that it was the name that drew the fewest confused stares and/or eye rolls from the scientists and engineers whom I hope to attract. Some think this classification is a bit boring…but I have no problem with that! After all, I have — to some extent — made my name diving deeper into the bori...| www.freaktakes.com
This was initially a section of my larger Bell Labs post.| www.freaktakes.com
