Rapid growth in technology & innovation - What about sustainability?

I came across this excellent video on speed of Technology and innovation in YouTube. It really puts things in perspective of the progress we have made in the last several decades/century. 20th century has been the most event filled one in terms of technological progress, innovation & growth in the human history. Never before have we seen several disruptive innovations on a global scale (Ex: Airplane, Automobile, Television, Telephone/cell phone, Computers, Internet etc) within such a short span of time. We made huge progress in almost all fields, most notable amongst those include medicine and science. Technology and innovation has been instrumental in elevating our quality of life and life expectancy. It has shrunk time & distance and enabled us to communicate and express ourselves better. It has made the world one global village!

While there are many positives due to technology, there are also several negatives. We have developed several mass destruction weapons and biological weapons that has potential to destroy the entire life on this planet. We are our biggest enemy and our biggest risk today! In our enthusiasm to advance technology and improve our quality of life we have forgotten the whole concept of 'sustainability'. We have been abusing our planet and have been depleting its resources at a rapid pace. We have been polluting our environment, triggering off large scale environmental changes and global warming. While technology may seem to elevate our quality of life in the near term, if we don't reduce our impact on the environment and fix these issues immediately our future generations will have a drastically reduced quality of life and there is a possibility that their very survival will be threatened.

The need of the hour is to channel our knowledge and innovation to develop sustainable technologies that reduce our impact on this planet. While the last century had been focused on developing new technologies that improved our quality of life, this century should be focused on fixing these technologies, making them sustainable and reversing some of the damage we have done. In order to do that and ensure the survival of our future generations we need to drastically increase the pace of innovation of sustainable technologies.

A lot of political will and investments are required to trigger the next wave of disruptive innovation. In the last decade the awareness of our 'unsustainable development' has definitely increased. However our reaction to it has been somewhat muted and it is not coordinated. We need to shed our differences, geographical boundaries and unite as a single force. We need to act really fast and decisively for us to succeed. The next 2-3 decades will be critical and will determine the course of our future. It will be interesting to see if we can achieve this transformation in our lifetime!

Pls share your thoughts/comments on the above.

Believe in yourself!

One of the most widely reported and talked about story this week has been the appearance of Susan Boyle, a 47 year old singer on the show 'Britain's Got Talent'. This has been the most viral video ever with around 50 million views within 72 hours! As part of the show she attempts to sing 'l dreamed a dream' song from Les Miserables and it was a fabulous performance. The complete audience & judges were stunned and they gave her a standing ovation.

I found this video very inspirational. Here are some of the key learning's from this:

- Belief in self: In life you will always have people who would mock you and doubt your capabilities, having self-confidence and believing in yourself is very critical to success. Initially when Susan came on the stage, both judges and the complete audience were being very cynical and were mocking her. Susan did not let this affect her. She held her nerve and went on to give a fabulous performance. This was possible due to her self-confidence and belief in self.

- Appearances can be deceptive: Most of us typically tend to form opinions on a person based on looks, without interacting/making an effort to know them better. The same happened in Susan's case as well. Everyone including the judges were very skeptic about her and mocked her initially. However at the end of her performance they were stunned. Don't form opinions based on looks alone. Take time to know them better before forming opinions.

- Talent & hard work triumphs: If you have the right talent and work hard you will surely succeed irrespective of the adversities faced. Inspite of all the odds against her Susan went on to score the highest rating in the show due to her talent and hard work.

Check out Susan's performance. Its 7 minutes spent well!


Grazie Susan Boyle! from seb fil on Vimeo.

Dream of flight in a high-tech wingsuit

This guy rocks!!! Wingsuit jumping is the leading edge of extreme sports -- an exhilarating feat of almost unbelievable daring, where skydivers soar through canyons at over 100MPH. Ueli Gegenschatz talks about how (and why) he does it, and shows jawdropping film.

Ueli Gegenschatz takes flight just about every way a human can: paragliding, skydiving, BASE jumping (from the Eiffel Tower), and most breathtakingly by donning a wingsuit and soaring.

Internet penetration: An analysis

Came across this interesting presentation by Microsoft on Internet trends in Europe. Europe & North America are leading the pack in terms of internet penetration & usage. By 2010, Internet is expected to overtake television as the primary media as Europe. Europeans are expected to spend more time in Internet than on television! This is a significant milestone in the history of Internet. With this Internet has truly gone mainstream. The trend in North America is similar.

Europe Logs On

View more presentations from crossthebreeze.

Asia is lagging global Internet penetration by a sizable margin. In terms of absolute number of users Asia is the highest (Thanks to China), However in terms of % penetration we are still a good 5-10yrs behind NA/Europe. Current internet penetration in Asia is in the mid-teens. Internet penetration in most major developing countries in Asia ranges between low single digits to 20%, compare this with Europe/NA where the penetration is north of 70%.

Listed below are major stumbling blocks and some of steps that could help with improving the internet penetration in Asia:

PC Penetration: PC penetration rates in Asia are very low. Of the developing countries china leads the pack with around 22% penetration but rest of the populous countries like India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia etc are lagging behind with single digit penetration rates. Making PC's more affordable(tax holidays etc.) and enabling easy availability of loans/low interest loans etc could help with improving the penetration.

Network Infrastructure: Internet bandwidth & Broadband penetration is very low. Per capita bandwidth availability is a fraction of what you see in developed countries. Also bandwidth charges are still high. Massive increase in bandwidth capacity coupled with drastic decrease in bandwidth rates is required to increase broadband adoption rates.

Regional language support & content: Currently a major portion of internet is in English/European languages. Most of current penetration is driven by urban users who are conversant in English. As more rural population/non tech population come online, serving localized content in regional languages is critical to increase penetration and make internet more relevant to these rural users.

Computer literacy & Internet awareness: Literacy rates in most of these countries are low. Computer literacy rate is even lower. Increasing computer literacy and internet awareness is very critical. This should be become a core part of the education system and should be mandated in all schools.

Utility apps: One of the most effective ways to improve internet penetration is by making it more useful to people for their day to day functions - online utility billing/payments , Online taxes, Online registration, online accounts(Banks, Brokerage etc), online shopping etc. Both Governments and corporates should aggressively invest in internet enabling key functions. Making things useful for people and enabling them to do all their tasks from the comfort of their home is a sure fire way of improving internet adoption.

Mobile internet: Globally in the next decade mobile internet users are expected to overtake PC users. Mobile penetration in Asian countries is fairly high. Enabling utility apps(mentioned above) through mobile internet would be a good way to increase penetration. This should also be complemented by lowering of mobile data rates.

By 2020, I expect Asian internet penetration to catch up with penetration levels in NA/Europe. I also expect global internet user base to exceed 5 Billion users (4-5x today's user base).

Future of War: Is Terminator/Matrix scenario going to be a reality?

I saw an interesting TED speech by P.W. Singer about the future of warfare. As part of his speech Singer shows how widespread use of robots in war is changing the realities of combat. He shows us scenarios straight out of science fiction -- that now may not be so fictitious.

A lot of these technologies are either operational or in prototype today. The day is not far when you will see battalions of robots/machines, and warfare would be fought from remote. One of the key aspect of this robotic warfare is that the profile of soldiers is changing. Soldiers of tomorrow will be techies/nerds that will be remotely operating the robots and directing the warfare from the safety of their desks. This is like an extension from some of the video games that we see today. Some of you techies out there watch out there is an interesting career option opening up for you :) On a positive note ,this is a great innovation and will result in lesser fatalities during war.

While these technologies are great and very progressive the flip side is, these robots/devices are prone to be/will be hacked. It opens up possibilities where terrorist groups consisting of few hackers can wire the devices to attack innocents or turn against the countries that own them. It reduces the entry barrier to terrorism and will enable a very small group of terrorists to cause great damage. Size, number of people they have, funding etc. will not matter any more. Total dependence on technology is the biggest risk in this electronic warfare.

Check out the below video:



This video has got me thinking and too many questions are floating in my head - Is the scenario portrayed in Martix, terminator etc going to be reality in the not too distant future? Is there a possibility we might see it in our lifetimes(next 4-5 decades)? This is a great innovation/achievement however given our long history of conflicts and wars is this a direction we should be taking? Finally what are the options available to mitigate some of the risks caused by robotic warfare?

Pls share your thoughts on the above.

Photo Credit: joberrr

90% Tax on bonus: Are we being fair?

AIG bonuses has been the top issue in the news for more than a week now. Almost everyone including media, politicians, public are emotionally charged up. There is so much bad blood and negativity out there. Is all this hype & knee jerk reactions justified? I don't think so. We all seem to be carried away by this hype created/fueled by media & politicians and are failing to look at this in a bipartisan and level headed manner.

I agree that careless decisions by some of the senior banking executives led us to this current situation. In reality most of these execs who were responsible for this crisis have already left or have been forced to leave the financial institutions. They have made their money and have got away scot-free. The folks that are remaining are the folks that were working in profitable units of the banks(not involved with crisis), or those that have been hired/charged with fixing this crisis and getting things back in control, or relatively junior folks that merely followed orders. These are the folks that are working hard today to keep the system running, These are the folks that are trying their best to help us recover from this crisis. Is it fair on our part to penalize them?

One of the things that is happening today is generalization, rather than picking out and punishing the folks that caused this crisis, we seem to be indicting the complete banking community and focusing our ire & hatred on them. The politicians that are pushing for the 90% tax on bonuses today are the same folks that legalized & encouraged complex risky instruments like CDS etc in the name of liberalization. Don't they have an equal or higher responsibility for this bubble? Implementing the 90% taxation of bonuses for all bankers is a gross violation of individual rights(failing to pay for the work done/wrongly appropriating the money) and discrimination of banking community. This is no different than racial or ethnic discrimination, in this case discrimination is based on industry. This is also gross misuse of powers by the politicians. I can understand this happening in a Tanzania or North Korea but not in the US. The majority of folks impacted by this law are innocents. I'm surprised that there isn't any level headed person in our political system, that can rise above these silly politics and come up with a bi-partisan, honest and just solution.

Lastly, we seem to be looking at just one side of the coin. Here's a letter by an AIG executive to the CEO highlighting other side of the coin. I hope some of the media personalities and politicians that are fueling this hatred get to read this and realize their mistake.

Pls let me know your thoughts on this issue.

Photo Credits: fintag, hanneorla

High Altitude Wind Energy

Came across this interesting TED video on high-altitude wind energy. Its amazing that we are just scraping the surface of alternate energy. We are just getting started with wind power as an energy source and currently less than 1.5% of world's energy comes from wind. This is one of the most rapidly growing alternate energy source. Along with solar, wind represents the only renewable source of energy that is substantially larger than the world's current energy needs(72TW capacity vs 15TW global consumption today).Most of the wind energy we are harnessing today is in the lower atmosphere (ground level) where the efficiency is low. This video talks about harnessing wind power at higher altitudes. This is a green field technology with high potential.

High-altitude wind energy has the largest energy per square foot of all of the renewable energy technologies (wind, solar, tidal, hydroelectric, biomass, geothermal) and a very low cost. Capturing a small fraction of the global high-altitude wind energy flux could be sufficient to supply the current energy needs of the globe. This is achieved through the use of high altitude kites & Air-borne wind turbines. Technologies exist today to harvest this in a large scale and this has potential to change the energy landscape.

About this talk

In this brief talk, Saul Griffith unveils the invention his new company Makani Power has been working on: giant kite turbines that create surprising amounts of clean, renewable energy.

About Saul Griffith

Inventor Saul Griffith looks for elegant ways to make real things, from low-cost eyeglasses to a kite that tows boats. His latest projects include open-source inventions and elegant new ways…

Photo Credits: Ronnie44052

Auto Meltdown - End of an era (Part III - Final Part)

In my earlier blogs in this series I had covered about the current state of auto industry and how the US auto industry got into this mess. In this post I be focusing on my thoughts around the future of the auto Industry.

Auto Industry is in a serious need for disruptive innovation. The internal combustion engine technology was invented in 1870's in Germany. It is the same technology that has been running our cars for well over 130+ yrs!! While there has been improvements, optimizations etc the base technology is still the same. Compare this with other fields - Energy/Power, Medicine, Telecom, IT, Aviation or any other field for that matter, we've had multiple disruptive innovations and technology has evolved leaps and bounds during the last century. Due to cheap availability of oil, the auto industry was complacent and failed to innovate. The auto industry in the current state is not sustainable. The technology running our autos need a complete refresh and be environment friendly for the industry to recover and maintain its growth. Since the beginning of this decade awareness of this issue has increased amongst auto companies. Huge amounts of money is being pumped into research in alternate technology cars. I expect this to spawn off a wave of disruptive innovations in the next 1-2 decades. We are currently at the beginning of this cycle.

Alternate energy/Clean tech cars are the buzz words these days. In terms of technology, Electric plug-ins leads the pack, Some of the other key alternate technologies that hold a lot of promise incude fuel cell, Solar etc. It will be few more years before these technologies mature. While all the auto majors(GM, Ford, Toyota, Honda etc) are researching in new technologies and are in various stages of development of alternate energy cars, there is a slew of VC funded startups that are working in parallel to come up with nextgen cars. Some of these start ups like Tesla, Aptera, Fisker etc are in advanced stages and plan to roll out their cars in the next 12-18 months. I expect some of these new startups to take off and go mainstream(if they dont get acquired!). This transition into alternate tech cars is going to shake up the industry in the next decade. Those players that are not in the forefront and capitalizing on this trend would get left behind and eventually perish. I also see the current gas-electric hybrid cars to be more of a stop gap till alternate energy cars mature . These will eventually get replaced. I expect this transition to clean tech to occur in the next couple of decades.

Next turning to key markets for car consumption US market is past its peak demand. As highlighted in my earlier post due to easy availability of credit & low fuel costs the demand had spiked during the last decade causing an auto bubble. The net new sales of 17-18M vehicles/yr is not sustainable. I see this number settling to between 12-15M vehicles/yr in the near to medium term(once we are out of this recession). US will be upstaged by China as the top car market in the world. Over the next decade I expect the car consumption in China, India and other developing countries to fuel the growth of car industry. This is the beginning of end of US domination of auto industry.

To sum up this series, we are currently in the midst of an unprecedented shake up in the auto industry. I expect this change to unravel over the next decade and will result in changing the complete landscape including technology, key players, key markets etc. It will be interesting to watch which players survive and which players will perish in this shake up. The time is here to clean up the auto industry and recreate it as a more sustainable and green industry!

Pls let me know your comments and thoughts on this series. Pls feel free to share your views on how you think the auto industry would evolve in the next 1-2 decades.

Photo credits: geeksg, cobra_x, Solaris_bot