Ink & Switch is a research lab inspired by Bells Labs and Xerox PARC. Peter is lab director, and he joins Adam and Mark to discuss DARPA-hard problems; the Ink & Switch academic-meets-web essay format; and how an independent research lab can fund itself through a spinout flywheel. Plus: Mendel and his peas, Thoreau and his ants, and the Arrakis attitude of the knife.

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Show notes

• Peter van Hardenberg @pvh
• Ink & Switch
• hydroponic gardening
• computer vision
• knight’s movement in chess
• efficient frontier
• Peritext
• Dynamicland
• Seinfeld calendar
• Zettelkasten
• rich text
• Metamuse episode with Geoffrey Litt
• Metamuse episode with Linus Lee
• “Arrakis teaches the attitude of the knife […] It’s complete because it’s ended here.”
• DARPA
• Richard Hamming
• National Science Foundation
• prime number theorum
• Ben Reinhardt on innovation orgs
• Bell Labs list of inventions
• flywheel
• Gregor Mendel’s experiments with pea plants
• “It’s not enough to be busy; so are the ants. The question is: what are we busy about?”
• DARPA autonomous vehicles contest and prize
• DARPA hard
• Gordon Brander
• pre-infusion
• Yjs
• the Hollywood model
• Martin Kleppmann
• Code for America
• no plan survives first contact with the enemy
• “pencils down”
• peer review
• citation