Entrepreneur Watch

Google tries to make the world green

Don't you just hate it when people don't take your brilliant advice? I've been telling people for years that we need a new publication dedicated to covering technology entrepreneurs, but does anybody listen? Geez...

Larry Page hates it too. At the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting last February, Page called for the scientists present to focus some of their creative energy on creating clean energy. Apparently, not enough of them have taken his advice.

So now he's dedicating some of Google's resources to the task. In his blog post he starts out by noting that "Clean and affordable energy is a growing need for our company."

Perhaps he's trying to justify why Google is getting into such an unrelated field with that opening. In a Fortune article a couple days ago, Brent Schlender already asked, "Is Google Spinning Out Of Control?"

And that opinion was based just on "two extraordinarily ambitious strategic gambits" -- OpenSocial, an attempt to create an open platform for social networks and Google's new cell phone initiative to create an open platform for phones. Imagine what Schlender thinks of this latest initiative.

Google, says Schlender, has no experience in creating platforms. Well, unless you consider things like  Google Maps a platform with all the mashups being created.

But he's right, these efforts do take Google well beyond its traditional expertise. These are attempts to do something good and useful for the world.

The key phrase in Page's blog is, "we're seeking to  accelerate the pace at which clean energy technologies are developing." Google is trying to be a catalyst for others to take up the challenge. It's the same with Google's attempts to push municipal wi-fi into the world. Many others have taken up that gauntlet, even as Google's experiment in San Francisco failed.

StreetInsider.com quotes Dr. Larry Brilliant, Executive Director of Google.org: "by funding research on promising technologies, investing in promising new companies, and doing a lot of R&D ourselves, we may help spark a green electricity revolution that will deliver breakthrough technologies priced lower than coal."

If Google can't pull these deals off, maybe it can inspire others to, perhaps even helping to fund them. Google put some money behind Meraki Networks, which is getting volunteers or entrepreneurs to share their own broadband networks with cheap wi-fi devices, even inspiring the founders to start the company in the first place.

Coincidentally, after the Google/Earthlink attempt to offer San Francisco a free wi-fi system went into apparently permanent limbo, Meraki offered to give away routers to SF residents to spread a little free wi-fi love there.

As an inspirational force, I say, more power to Google.

 

Virginia Tech and the nature of evil

I've been working on some other stuff lately.

I was looking into some fascinating brain research studying the basis of morality and psychopathic behavior. Because of the tragedy at Virginia Tech, I published an article on Technology Review's Web site.

Brain imaging scans called functional MRI can track activity in the brain in real time. Researchers have been studying the brains of people as they ponder moral issues, including the brains of psychopaths.

They find that the brains of psychopaths don't show any activity in empathy centers, while the brains of normal people do. Psychopaths have no empathy, remorse or fear, showing the same concern for people as hunters show toward deer.

From the researchers I talked to, it does not appear that Cho was a psychopath.

The most likely profile is that he was severely depressed. In extremely rare cases, a trauma, even an imagined one, can turn really dysfunctional depressives into a "Rampage killer."

One psychiatrist I talked to thinks this was the case at Virginia Tech as well as Columbine. These people were isolated, lonely, convinced the world was out to get them. Then they just snap. Says UCSF's Dr. Thomas Lewis, "It's kind of like throwing a temper tantrum--only with automatic weapons."

It's fascinating stuff. The research is still new, but maybe research is on the path of finding that a dysfunctional brain is really the root of all evil.