Archive - FreakTakes

How did places like Bell Labs know how to ask the right questions?

Alternative Title: Why all applied research organizations should hire a Bell-style systems engineer

Apr 20, 2023 •

When do ideas get easier to find?

And why progress studies may be much older than you think

May 20, 2022 •

Managing Lockheed’s Skunk Works

And Many Stories About the Maleffects of Bureaucracy on R&D

Mar 7, 2024 •

A Progress Studies History of Early MIT — Part 1: Training the engineers who built the country

Jul 28, 2022 •

An Alternative Approach to Deep Tech VC

Marrying early YC's goals with systems from the mid-20th C. deep tech pipeline

Jul 13, 2023 •

“The Third University of Cambridge”: BBN and the Development of the ARPAnet

We’ve all heard that “DARPA invented the Internet.” But few have heard of BBN, the contractor that did the most work to bring the ARPAnet into…

Dec 14, 2023 •

A Scrappy Complement to FROs: Building More BBNs

ARPA's early decades of success have made the ARPA model iconic.

Oct 15, 2024 •

What should new-age research organizations be optimizing for?

The Engineering Innovation Newsletter. Every piece in this newsletter shares a common goal: to propose concrete ways forward for those looking to help…

Jan 31, 2022 •

A Report on Scientific Branch-Creation: How the Rockefeller Foundation helped bootstrap the field of molecular biology

This piece is noticeably longer (twice the length) than the others on this Substack.

Jan 12, 2023 •

A New Chapter At FreakTakes

An applied research shop becomes a bit more applied

Jan 10 •

A Note on the Changing Faces of (D)ARPA

Three variables that mark key regime changes in ARPA history

Dec 31, 2024 •

John von Neumann: A Strange Kind of Bird

What his career can teach us about the nature of scientific creativity.

Mar 31, 2022 •

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