People Over Pixels

So I’ve once again been a complete tourist in the Silicon Valley. A friend of mine that knows someone that works at  Facebook  (something that is completely normal around here) invited me to join them for lunch at the social media giant’s HQ. Upon arrival I was told to search our intern friend’s name on Facebook using one of the many iPads in order to print my visitor’s badge. I quickly learned that at Facebook, using Facebook is not only encouraged but is the primary method of office communication. Pretty much frowned upon in offices around the world,but around here if you’re not on Facebook then you’re not doing your job.

As you can see from the photos I was pretty amazed by the abundance of free (yes, free) food at Facebook. Food labelled with the infamous FB logo are free for employees to munch away on to their heart and belly’s content. Writing on the walls is another non-traditional office activity at FB since what else would the walls of Facebook be for than to be written on?  This creative outlet has resulted in works of art that as you can see are beautiful and often inspiring. 

Of course, before leaving I had to sign the infamous ‘Facebook Wall’ and post it to my own Facebook wall in true inception-style tech-geekiness that can only be achieved in the Silicon Valley. I went for the generic ‘Nikita was here 31/07/13, in true tourist fashion. With one week left in San Francisco,  these tourist posts are only going to increase as I attempt to cram as much sight-seeing in as possible!

 You have been warned 🙂

-Nikita

Rainbow Mansion & Space McDonald’s

As our time in the Silicon Valley draws to a close, my friends and I have been making the most of what it has to offer outside of our work at NASA Ames Research Center.  First up, we visited the Rainbow Mansion. A communal house full of socially concious, international and driven people, the mansion hosted a lecture by Pascal Lee, co-founder and chairman of the Mars Institute and planetary scientist at the SETI Institute. His lecture on human settlement on Mars discussed colonisation of the red planet in a realistic and very much obvious second step for man and womankind. I mean duh..of course we’re moving to Mars before we over-exploit Earth and poison our atmosphere right? Right. 

After dinner with entrepreneur Chris Kemp, CEO of cloud computing company Nebula (you may remember him from my ‘2013 So Far’ post), we visited what can only be described as ‘Space McDonalds’. It doesn’t house the usual burgers and fries but instead, vintage space footage from NASA’s Lunar Orbiter mission that was sent to the Moon prior to Neil Armstrong’s mission in 1969. As part of the Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project (LOIRP), previously unopened audio and video footage from the 60s is restored and digitised under Ronald McDonald’s roof. As you can see from my photos, the McDonalds hasn’t changed much, with Apollo era footage stored and masquerading as Strawberry Jelly and Hotcake Syrup!

The Computer History Museum held a Byte Night event for Silicon Valley interns this week. The largest museum for the preservation of artefacts from the Information Age –  basically tech-nerd heaven. In the photos you can see my friends John, David and I trying and failing to compete against the artificially-intelligent computer system, Watson. I even spotted one of my childhood favourites, Playstation 1 on display! Now if that doesn’t make me feel old I don’t know what will.. 😦

Space company Planet Labs gave us a quick tour of their San Francisco office within which they are designing, manufacturing and testing small satellites known as CubeSats. Set to launch 28 by the end of the year, the company are dedicated to monitoring the environment . This window into the ever-evolving, beautiful Blue Marble is useful for for applications such as precision agriculture and land-use monitoring, not to mention help society as a whole better understand the planet and cater to its needs.

My step stop on the Silicon Valley tour is a social networking company that I’m pretty sure most of you guys use everyday. Look out for my next post to find out what tech company I acted like a complete tourist at next!

-Nikita