A BEAUTIFUL
MIND
He’s also keen to demonstrate
the urgency of replacing human
drivers with the autonomous automobiles he’s engineered.
“Would a self-driving car let us
do this?” I ask, as mounting Gforces press me back into my seat.
“No,” Thrun answers. “A selfdriving car would be much more
careful.”
Thrun, 45, is tall, tanned and
toned from weekends biking and
skiing at his Lake Tahoe home.
More surfer than scientist, he
smiles frequently and radiates
serenity—until he slams on his
brakes at the sight of a cop idling
in a speed trap at the side of the
highway. Something heavy thumps
against the seat behind us and
when Thrun opens the trunk moments later, he discovers that three
sheets of glass he’s been shuttling
around have shattered.
Once we reach Google X, he regains his stride, leaving me trotting
by his side as he racewalks to his
office. Motion is a constant in his
life. A pair of black roller skates sit
by his desk. Twelve years ago, he
borrowed his wife’s sneakers to run
the Pittsburg marathon, without
bothering to train for the race. He
got his son on skis before most other kids his age got out of diapers.
HUFFINGTON
8.19.12
“I’ve never seen
a person fail
if they didn’t
fear failure.”
When Thrun finds something he
wants to do or, better yet, something that is “broken,” it drives him
“nuts” and, he says, he becomes
“obsessed” with fixing it.
Over the last 17 years, Thrun
has been the author of, or a pivotal force behind, a list of solutions
to a entire roster of “broken”
things, making him a folk hero of
sorts among Silicon Valley innovators, though hardly a household
name elsewhere. While he’s in a
hurry in almost every other aspect
of his life, he embraces a slowcooking approach to invention and
product-building that sets him
apart from many of the create-itfund-it-and-flip-it whiz kids and
veterans who populate the Valley.
Thrun’s resume is populated
with seismic efforts, either those