photo of gurudwara ponta sahib (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
You have to be yourself. If you talk fast, if that is you, don't slow down. You can be only one person, and that is you. Just be yourself. You slowed down artificially for that speech in 2009, and that was the beginning of your end.
You became particularly shrill after that. Two reasons. One, the Great Recession hit you and your state. When that happens, people sometimes end up in dark corners. Two, that counter Obama speech in 2009 put you at the receiving end of racism. People who say they are only individuals, they don't have group identities are two dimensional creatures. And racism is a three dimensional reality. When 2D creatures get hit with a 3D reality, they don't know what hit them. You got infantilized. That was racist. But you will not understand if you keep claiming you are only an individual.
I have had hundreds of meals at the local Gurudwara. India is sorry 1984 happened. Now own up to it. You are Indian. Like JFK was Irish. He wore it on his sleeve. You are Indian, your wife is Indian, your kids are Indian. Your Indian identity goes back thousands of years. America would not be great if it did not allow you room for your Indian identity. I mean, my favorite thing about America are inter-racial, cross-cultural kids. But that does not take away from heritage, mine, or yours, or anyone else's.
On social issues you may hold any view you want, that does not bother people. But to say the alternative view is not valid is Taliban, it is not America. So on the social issues, you have to be live and let live. And since America is a free country, and social views don't change fast, it is best to push the social views to the background. You know where you stand, you respect where others stand, and you make them feel like you respect them, and you are done. No one is convincing nobody. Everybody is too smart by one and a half.
And focus hard core on the economic issues. This is where you will sink or swim. If you can show America you can help create the industries of tomorrow, you will regain your pre-2008 aura and seeming invincibility. Barack Obama is a tough guy to go against. Hillary knows. So do you. But she is running again.
As for the industries of tomorrow, talk to Vivek Wadhwa, the smartest dude in Silicon Valley. He was your active supporter, before you became shrill.
India is home to 30 percent of the world’s poorest, those living on less than $1.90 a day. Of the 1.3 billion Indians, 304 million do not have access to electricity; 92 million have no access to safe drinking water. ...... India’s rivers depend on the health of thousands of Himalayan glaciers at risk of melting because of a warming climate, while 150 million people are at risk from storm surges associated with rising sea levels. ..... The United Nations expects India’s population to reach 1.5 billion by 2030, bigger than China’s......
the world’s greenhouse gas emissions must be brought close to zero by the end of the century
.... economies like China and India must totally decarbonize their electricity supply around midcentury and achieve negative emissions from then on, using carbon capture technologies and vastly increased forests, to suck excessive carbon out of the atmosphere. ........ India must continue to grow at 7.5 to 8 percent a year for the next 15 years. ..... Even under the most ambitious goals for nuclear power and renewable energy, more than half of this power is expected to come from coal, the dirtiest fuel. “By 2030 India’s coal consumption could triple or quadruple” ...... It aims to get 40 percent of its electricity from nonfossil fuels by 2030 and to reduce its emissions intensity by 33 to 35 percent from 2005 to 2030. It also offers to vastly increase its forest cover. ..... India’s energy consumption amounts to only 0.6 metric tons of oil equivalent per person, about a third of the world average. It explains that “no country in the world” has ever achieved the development level of today’s advanced nations without consuming at least four tons.
In the 1980s, leading consultants were skeptical about cellular phones. McKinsey & Company noted that the handsets were heavy, batteries didn’t last long, coverage was patchy, and the cost per minute was exorbitant. It predicted that in 20 years the total market size would be about 900,000 units, and advised AT&T to pull out. McKinsey was wrong, of course. There were more than 100 million cellular phones in use in 2000; there are billions now. Costs have fallen so far that even the poor — all over world — can afford a cellular phone.......... The experts are saying the same about solar energy now. They note that after decades of development, solar power hardly supplies 1 percent of the world’s energy needs. They say that solar is inefficient, too expensive to install, and unreliable, and will fail without government subsidies. They too are wrong.
Solar will be as ubiquitous as cellular phones are.
...... solar power has been doubling every two years for the past 30 years — as costs have been dropping. He says
solar energy is only six doublings — or less than 14 years — away from meeting 100 percent of today’s energy needs
. ....... inexpensive renewable sources will provide more energy than the world needs in less than 20 years. Even then, we will be using only one part in 10,000 of the sunlight that falls on the Earth. ...... By 2020, solar energy will be price-competitive with energy generated from fossil fuels on an unsubsidized basis in most parts of the world. Within the next decade, it will cost a fraction of what fossil-fuel-based alternatives do. ....... wind, biomass, thermal, tidal, and waste-breakdown energy, and research projects all over the world are working on improving their efficiency and effectiveness. Wind power, for example, has also come down sharply in price and is now competitive with the cost of new coal-burning power plants in the United States. It will, without doubt, give solar energy a run for its money. There will be breakthroughs in many different technologies, and these will accelerate overall progress. ........
We will be able to create unlimited clean water — by boiling ocean water and condensing it.
With inexpensive energy, our farmers can also grow hydroponic fruits and vegetables in vertical farms located near consumers. Imagine skyscrapers located in cities that grow food in glass buildings without the need for pesticides, and that recycle nutrients and materials to ensure there is no ecological impact.
It no longer makes sense for any country to install a technology that can create a catastrophe such as Chernobyl or Fukushima — especially when far better alternatives are available. Technologies such as solar and wind are advancing so rapidly that by the time the first new nuclear reactors are installed in India, they will be less costly than nuclear energy. ...... Solar power has been doubling every two years for the past 30 years — as costs have been dropping. At this rate, solar is only six doublings — or less than 14 years — away from meeting practically all of today’s energy needs. Even with this, we will be using only one part in 10,000 of the sunlight that falls on the Earth. ....... For India, energy production using solar will alleviate the problems of its decaying national electricity grid. Energy can be generated and stored locally — at the village level. ......
The president should not be prescribing medicine that he would not take himself.
The United States has not installed any new nuclear plants for more than 30 years. There would be massive public protests if any were even proposed — anywhere in the country. Germany is working towards phasing out all of its nuclear plants by 2022 and many other developed countries are looking to follow its lead....... India is still reeling from the Bhopal disaster of 1984, when a leakage of cyanide gas at the Union Carbide plant killed 5,295 people and left tens of thousands with permanent disabilities. The surviving victims are stillbegging for fair compensation. This was a chemical catastrophe; a nuclear one would be far more destructive. ..... Instead of trying to chain India to the past with technologies such as nuclear, he should help the country leapfrog into the future with clean energy. This will benefit not only India, but also the world.
भारतका २४० ट्रिलियन डॉलर वाला अर्थतंत्र बनने का फोर्मुला इजराइल के पास है। वो कैसे? एक इसरायली के ब्रेन में per cubic millimeter जितना नॉलेज (ज्ञान) है उतना एक औसत भारतीय ब्रेन में भी भर दो। हो गया काम।
३०० मिलियन जनसंख्या वाले अमेरिका से ८ मिलियन वाले इसरायली सीधा प्रतिस्प्रधा करते हैं। अगर हिटलर ने दुसरे विश्व युद्ध में ६ मिलियन इसरायली को ख़तम नहीं किया होता तो शायद आज इजराइल अमेरिका से भी आगे होता।
It is all about knowledge, it is all about brain power. हवा में FM High School खोलो, घर घर ब्रॉडबैंड पहुँचाओ। संघम शरणम गच्छामि। Adult evening schools का प्रबंध करो। बच्चे दिन में पढ़ें, वयस्क रात में।
भारतीयों को trillion dollar industries के बारे में सोंचना चाहिए, and it is all knowledge based.
Steve Jobs was 52 when he announced the iPhone. ....... Years later, the Apple cofounder introduced the MacBook Air, App Store, and iPad. ..... “People under 35 are the people who make change happen; people over 45 basically die in terms of new ideas,” Vinod Khosla, a prominent investor, said at a conference I attended. ...... investor Paul Graham told the New York Times, “The cutoff in investors’ heads is 32; after 32, they start to be a little skeptical.” He acknowledged that he could be “tricked by anyone who looks like Mark Zuckerberg.” Others go so far as to claim that Internet entrepreneurs peak at age 25. .....
the stereotypes are flawed
..... companies that had made it out of the garage and were generating at least $1 million in revenue .... the average and median age of their founders was 39 ..... Twice as many were older than 50 as were younger than 25. And twice as many were older than 60 as were younger than 20. .... the backgrounds of 549 successful entrepreneurs in 12 high-growth industries. The average and median age of male founders in this group was 40, and a significant proportion were older than 50. ..... in every year from 1996 to 2013, Americans in the 55-to-64 age group started new businesses at a higher rate than those in their twenties and thirties. And the trend is building. Those ages 55 to 64 started 14 percent of all new businesses in 1996 but nearly 24 percent of them in 2013. ...... there is no substitute for experience and knowledge. .... What makes entrepreneurs successful, as my team’s research revealed, is work and industry experience and management ability. ......
20 years of investment data from nearly 100 venture funds. It found that the vast majority of them produced lower returns than did the public markets.
........ The experiment by Thiel to pay college students to drop out did not result in any world-changing startups. Most Thiel fellows joined other companies or went back to school. ...... the realization set in that the innovation advantage isn’t provided by youth, but by knowledge, maturity, experience, and connections. ...... The claim that only the young can effect change has been disproved not only by Apple, but also by founders, inventors, innovators, and executives at almost every major technology company, including Google, LinkedIn, Salesforce.com, Qualcomm, and Intel. Qualcomm, for example, was founded by Irwin Jacobs when he was 52 and Andrew Viterbi, who was 50. ....... untrue that people “die in terms of new ideas” as they approach 45 or that “young people are just smarter,” as Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg told an audience at Stanford in 2007. ...... the average age at which Nobel laureates performed their prizewinning work and the average age at which inventors had their great achievement was 39. ....... twice as many — 14 percent — were older than 50 as were younger than 26. .... the average age of innovators is steadily rising, with the average age of greatest achievement for Nobel Prize winners and great tech inventors having increased six years, to 45, in the 20th century. ....... is easier to write code for a cellphone than to learn how to
motivate and inspire employees, manage finances, and market products
. But building a business requires all of those skills. ......... A technology shift is happening that will dramatically alter the entrepreneurial landscape in the next few years. Several technologies — involving medicine, robotics, artificial intelligence, synthetic biology, 3D printing, and nanomaterials — are advancing at exponential rates and are converging. This is the same type of advance that is occurring with computers — with processing power doubling every 18 months, prices falling, and devices becoming smaller. A $500 laptop today has more computing power than did a Cray 2 supercomputer that cost $17.5 million in 1985 and had to be housed in a large building. ...... Digital tutors will be able to transform education. ...... These technologies will make it possible to create the next trillion-dollar industries and to better our lives. But they require knowledge of fields such as medicine, biotechnology, engineering, and nanotechnology. ...... we need to get beyond the stereotypes and realize that older entrepreneurs are going to better the world.
most of our leading companies won’t exist 15–20 years from now
. ..... Imagine being able to design your own iPhone and print it at home. .... With cardless transactions for purchasing goods, we won’t need the types of physical banks and financial institutions that we presently have. Banks in the United States seem to be complacent because they have laws protecting them from competition. But our laws don’t apply in other countries. We will see innovations happening abroad which disrupt industries in the United States. ...... it is a fact solar prices have dropped about 97 percent over the past 35 years, and, at the rate at which solar is advancing, by the end of this decade we will achieve grid parity across the United States. Grid parity means it’s cheaper to produce energy at home on your solar cells than to buy it from utilities. ........ Move forward another 10 or 20 years, and it will costs a fraction as much to produce your own energy as to buy it from the grid. ..... When we have unlimited energy, we can have unlimited clean water, because we can simply boil as much ocean water as we want. ........ landline businesses disappear. These were replaced by mobile—which is now being replaced by data. When I travel abroad, I don’t make long-distance calls any more, because I just call over Skype ...... the world will be very different 15 to 20 years from now. The vast majority of companies who are presently the leaders in their industries will likely not even exist. That is because industry executives either are not aware of the changes that are coming, are reluctant to invest the type of money that is be required for them to reinvent themselves, or are protecting legacy businesses. ..... New trillion-dollar industries will come out of nowhere and wipe out existing trillion-dollar industries.
Vivek Wadhwa, me saying you are the smartest dude in Silicon Valley...
