The Next Fifty Years of Science, and Other Videos from Googleplex

Last week, we talked a lit­tle (here and here) about the tri­als and tribu­la­tions of find­ing enlight­ened con­tent on GooTube (Google Video + YouTube). What we did­n’t men­tion is that some of this good con­tent comes straight from Google head­quar­ters itself. This page, sim­ply titled Videos from Google­plex, cap­tures talks giv­en most­ly at cor­po­rate cen­tral, and they’re bro­ken down into three cat­e­gories: TechTalks, Authors@Google, and Mis­cel­la­neous Google Videos. While some of the videos pro­mote Google’s inter­nal life and cul­ture, oth­ers touch on sub­jects that have broad­er appeal. Like this one: Here we have Kevin Kel­ly, co-founder of Wired Mag­a­zine and for­mer edi­tor of the icon­ic Whole Earth Review, talk­ing about how the path to sci­en­tif­ic knowl­edge — how our sci­en­tif­ic method — is like­ly to change over the next 50 years. As you could well imag­ine, this kind of for­ward-look­ing think­ing is bound to res­onate at Google, but it’s easy to see it hav­ing an audi­ence beyond. Give this 49-minute video a look and see what you think. At best, you’ll take away some­thing from it. At worst, you’ll get a feel for what the folks at Google are pon­der­ing.