[kulkarnic]

The prize money is definitely a great idea. It'll probably be seen as a rich-company-PR move, but in hindsight, I think we'll see it as a sign of the times.

Computer science seems to be going through a similar transformation as Palo Alto. Just as Palo Alto went from a place where people were modest about their wealth to one where vanity license-plates decorate Teslas at the curb-side, computer scientists seem to have transformed in public imagination from quiet nerds to celebrity saviors of mankind. I'm not sure the image is well-deserved, but so it goes.

[sanderjd]

I don't think that transformation has really happened in the public imagination at large, but perhaps it has in the bay area. Sure, the public imagination is somewhat taken with some of technology's successful figures, like Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg and Sergey Brin and Larry Page, but successful business-people have always been admired, regardless of whether their background is in finance or marketing or management or engineering or programming.

[j2kun]

This is especially considering how every Turing award winner is recognized for extremely technical contributions. There's no way the general public will think of Richard Karp or Stephen Cook as a hero because they won't even be able to say anything resembling what they did.

[smeyer]

Most Nobel prizes in physics are awarded for extremely technical work as well, but people frequently find ways to distill some of it into something understandable enough to make for good popular articles whenever the prizes are announced.

[acabal]

Well to be fair, even the Nobel prize is a sort of PR move, though a posthumous one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Nobel#Nobel_Prizes

[vinceguidry]

Everything large organizations and ultra-rich people do is PR.

[melling]

Especially the anonymous super rich.

http://m.philanthropy.com/article/Donors-Increasingly-Make-T...

[frandroid]

Nice, better than my response. :)

[cma]

the anonymous veneer can just be used to make the donator seem even more selfless and impressive:

http://youtu.be/gqncCjxGqGw

[melling]

No enthusiasm. Just demonstrating that that person was obviously wrong. It was the quickest thing I could come up with in 15 seconds. I was just giving a proof by contradiction. All I need is one, right? I can give you other reasons people give to charities. They might want to see a cure for a disease they might get, for example.

$125m to Stanford: http://cancer.stanford.edu/research/documents/scinewswinter2...

Didn't one or both of the Google founders donate to help some conditions that they have?

Howard Hughes gave a lot of his money to his medical institute simply because he didn't want to give it to the government.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Hughes_Medical_Institu...

[vinceguidry]

Staying out of the public eye is very much a PR strategy as well.

[frandroid]

Like ordering protesting student-teachers to be ridden of by gang members... Making other companies bankrupt through leveraging your OS near-monopoly... Colluding with the SEC to not get criminally charged for your financial fraud... Investing your future memristors... Eradicating Malaria...

[jeffreyrogers]

> computer scientists seem to have transformed in public imagination from quiet nerds to celebrity saviors of mankind.

The people I'm around seem to still view programmers/computer scientists as awkward nerds, but now they're awkward nerds who you can make money off of.