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vgr's profile
Venkatesh Rao
Venkatesh Rao
Venkatesh Rao
@vgr

Tweets

Venkatesh Rao

@vgr

This is my conversational account. For my work follow @ribbonfarm, @breaking_smart, @artofgig. Tweets are 90% vacuous views, apathetically held. Mediocritopian.

Los Angeles, CA
venkateshrao.com
Joined August 2007

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    1. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 16 Nov 2019
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      Best-case outcome if neither applies: your idea has commercial potential and you can get a startup out of it. Which means the vast majority of ideas, both STEM and humanities, are out. Even I’m not optimist enough to think your R&D on 16rh century French poets can be a unicorn.

      2 replies 2 retweets 29 likes
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    2. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 16 Nov 2019
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      The reason software doesn’t eat R&D even though people think it should is that tools or open access to published lit/libraries, or free peer-reviewed publishing/presentation forums (if you want that) are only a tiny fraction of the cost for most ideas. The main host is time.

      2 replies 3 retweets 51 likes
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    3. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 16 Nov 2019
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      Even if the most expensive research tools like LHC or Hubble got as cheap as Arduinos, it wouldn’t help. That’s not the cost bottleneck. The bottleneck is researcher time. Even crappiest, cheapest conference paper I ever wrote took at least 6 months (~7k grad student salary then)

      1 reply 3 retweets 59 likes
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    4. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 16 Nov 2019
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      This isn’t cheap talk btw. I dropped 2k on a personal Matlab license after I went indie and kept it current for years, and went through dozens of false starts working on various ideas. Couldn’t find the time to develop any of them to even bad-conference-paper level.

      1 reply 0 retweets 30 likes
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    5. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 16 Nov 2019
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      Note: peer-reviewed publishing or patents just as depth cal9bration. I wouldn’t necessarily publish in such forms since I don’t think those institutional processes have ever added much to my work. Nor into them tbf, in the peer reviewing I’ve done. But I’d aim for that depth.

      1 reply 0 retweets 14 likes
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    6. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 16 Nov 2019
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      Note #2: I enjoy proper research, but wasn’t a great talent even at my peak and am now likely at 60%. So in a way this is an okay market outcome. If I were wealthy I might do self-indulgent mediocre research for the rest of my life, but no reason you should pay for it.

      2 replies 1 retweet 19 likes
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    7. Kevin Marks‏ @kevinmarks 16 Nov 2019
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      Replying to @vgr

      One answer is smaller institutions like @nwspk or Mozilla Foundation that offer time limited research fellowships rather than tenure

      1 reply 0 retweets 4 likes
    8. Edward Saperia‏ @edsaperia 16 Nov 2019
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      Replying to @kevinmarks @vgr @nwspk

      We can do slightly different things, more like what a digital agency might do. Agility is a benefit. See http://electiontechhandbook.uk  for a recent output.

      1 reply 1 retweet 1 like
    9. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 16 Nov 2019
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      Replying to @edsaperia @kevinmarks @nwspk

      For a small fraction of addressable problems

      2 replies 0 retweets 0 likes
    10. Kevin Marks‏ @kevinmarks 16 Nov 2019
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      Replying to @vgr @edsaperia @nwspk

      A lot of the value in these kinds of institutions is the common room, the peer group. That is much harder to maintain and especially to build online

      1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes
      Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 16 Nov 2019
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      Replying to @kevinmarks @edsaperia @nwspk

      Not for me. I got very little out of peers. It was pure;y about paid-for time for me.

      2:26 PM - 16 Nov 2019
      1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes
        1. New conversation
        2. Kevin Marks‏ @kevinmarks 16 Nov 2019
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          Replying to @vgr @edsaperia @nwspk

          It's also about creating a context for the kind of work. Talking to my sons about their university experience, I was fascinated that the library was valued as a context - they didn't need the books very often, but a dedicated space for reading, thinking and writing mattered.

          1 reply 0 retweets 1 like
        3. Edward Saperia‏ @edsaperia 16 Nov 2019
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          Replying to @kevinmarks @vgr @nwspk

          My experience as a librarian says it’s not that researchers ever need lots of books, but that they need a few very specific things that only a large library would have 😏

          0 replies 0 retweets 2 likes
        4. End of conversation

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