Nathan Myhrvold
Nathan Myhrvold
Nathan Paul Myhrvold, formerly Chief Technology Officer at Microsoft, is co-founder of Intellectual Ventures and the principal author of Modernist Cuisine. Myhrvold was listed as co-inventor on 17 patents at Microsoft and has since co-sponsored applications for over 500 other patents for which his corporation is funding the patent monetization effort...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionBusinessman
Date of Birth3 August 1959
CountryUnited States of America
responsibility reality car
Politicians don't like to face unpleasant realities. In truth, nobody does, but as individuals, we have no choice; if we neglect to plan ahead, we are held accountable. Fail to meet your responsibilities at work, and you get fired. Ignore your car's gas gauge, and you get stranded.
real ideas people
In politics, religion and other areas of culture, people disagree on the worth of competing ideas. There is no equivalent to the scientific method that can determine in a robust way which ideas match the real world, and which ones can be ruled out. So conflicting ideologies persist indefinitely.
real people random-things
Another random thing I do is the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, or SETI. And you may be familiar with the movie 'Contact,' which sort of popularized that. It turns out there are real people who go out and search for extraterrestrials in a very scientific way.
basic best brightest companies finding good growing notion research task turned
The task of growing is finding these people. A lot of companies are (turning away) from the notion that basic research can be a good investment. Some of the best and brightest are being turned out by their companies,
built computer current great ground microsoft research rick science status top
Rick Rashid is one of the world's great research leaders. He built Microsoft Research from the ground up to its current status as one of the top computer science research laboratories. Microsoft Research couldn't be in better hands.
bill culture determines gates
The personality of Bill Gates determines the culture of Microsoft.
focusing theory worked
Ultimately, my Ph.D. is in mathematical physics, focusing on quantum field theory and curved space-time, and I worked with Stephen Hawking.
We have the only cookbook in the world that has partial differential equations in it.
age wonderful
Age can be wonderful for red wine, but not for spacecraft.
create helluva invention rate
If we could create invention capitalism, that would be a helluva legacy, that would be a helluva thing to do... We could actually turbocharge the rate at which the world invents things.
I never was a popular kid in class.
people
If you want to do interesting software, you have to have a bunch of people do it, because the amount of software that one person can do isn't that interesting.
bad died records replaced type
Records were replaced by CDs, and lead type died in favor of computerized fonts. However, each had a 100-year ride of popularity, so you can't feel too bad for them.
people percent power talk
There's a limit to how much you can deploy renewables, like wind or solar. People will talk about getting up to 30 percent of America's power from renewables, but you can't get to 100 percent because of their unreliability.