Google X Lab

     My last blog about the augmented-reality glasses and perhaps eventually contact lenses really got me thinking.  This is the kind of stuff that interests me.  So I wondered where does Google come up with this stuff.  In a sense, it was an easily answered question.  In another sense, I will never know.  Some quick searches pointed me toward the Google X Lab, where Google, for all intents and purposes, creates the future.  We have all had ideas when we were young that deep down we figured were impossible, maybe a flying car, maybe some sort of teleportation device.  Well, Google is making these a reality.  Ok, maybe not these two examples but you know what I mean.  People that work in the Google X Lab are smart, like very smart.  They come up with inventions and designs that I consider to be in the future.  Such inventions include the space elevator or driverless cars (see here).  The crazy thing is, many of these futuristic inventions are very near ready.  Driverless cars have been tested for some time now, although who knows when they would be ready, and more importantly, when society would be able to confidently accept them onto the roads in mass.
     The great thing about Google X Lab is its secrecy.  It is exactly as you would expect.  Nobody knows where it is, and when someone gets fired or quits, it is a big deal to keep it secret.  Google's co-founders were both reportedly seriously involved in the lab until Larry Page became CEO, and he diverted his attention elsewhere.
      Larry Page and his co-founder Sergey Brin have both expressed serious interest and high hopes for artificial intelligence.  One main point holding AI back has been computational power, which Google has alot, I mean alot, of.  Google now has eleven data centers scattered across the globe and considers their servers to all be one supercomputer.  Still not enough to simulate a human brain, Google continues to grow and believes in the coming years that it will be possible.  Amazing, interesting, mind-blowing, yet scary things are on the horizon, and Google seems to be behind it all.