Cannes 2013: Moonshot Thinking: There's a role for creative too!

The session was presented by Dr. Astro Teller, who oversees the Google X programme, responsible for Google Glass, the upcoming self driving cars, and a whole lot of other ambitious projects. Teller's key message was on the need to connect moonshot thinking with great storytelling, which is where the creative mind came in for him. And, moonshot thinking? "Moonshots are seemingly impossible and yet impossibly important ideas that, through science, technology and creativity, can be brought to reality" - best explained at www.solveforx.com.

Teller took the audience through the thinking behind some of the key moments behind a few moonshot products, with the unique requirements it involves. The idea being to shun incremental improvements for massive, disruptive solutions, failure is something to be welcomed.

Teller reckoned that one of the biggest challenges to our thinking, when confronted with truly amazing new technologies or solutions, is to use them to solve 'old' problems. He gave the example of an exhibition he had attended as a kid, on the evolution of aluminium and its uses, and how one of the earliest applications of the smelted metal had been to make a walking stick, painted to look like wood!

Thus, the storytelling, or the creative ability came in at this stage, in the ability to ask completely new questions, or challenge seemingly impossible challenges with moonshot thinking (which doesn't necessarily require a tech background). Likening the Google X complex to Roald Dahl's "Charlie and the Chocolate factory", Teller pointed out that like Willy Wonka in the book, Google X had set itself a task to create amazing products from amazing people. For them, the amazing people being the many PhDs working at the complex, Teller's equivalent of the talented Oompa-Loompas in the book. Which explains the sticker he has on this car, saying, "Save the Oompa-Loompas"!

Teller touched upon one of Google's recently announced projects, which it tested in New Zealand last week. The project (Project Loon) hopes to use special weather balloons that will float in the stratosphere and enable wireless internet to reach unserved parts and populations at a cost even lower than current costs. Potential user base? 4.5 billion people.

Teller had an interesting take on our attitude to technology, too, explaining how it takes creative thinking to make it more easily acceptable. He gave the example of robotics, where the popular imagination sees it as all about these humanoid beings who would do our work for them. Not realising that we have robots all around us, be it the planes we travel in, escalators, cars, the many machines we use every day. Giving them nice, everyday names has made them different. Thus, he reckoned that artificial intelligence, as and when it develops to really make a serious impact over the next 20 years, would probably get a new name by then, to get over the misgivings of worriers.