Human beings are
designed to be local optimists and global pessimist. Most of us suffer from
band wagon effect, we have the propensity to believe things others do. In newspapers 90% of news articles are pessimistic, because good news doesn’t catch
our attention. Human beings for the last
150,000 years metamorphosed in local and linear way but today’s environment is global
and exponential. At the time of our ancestors everything used to happen within
a day’s walk in their linear and exceptionally slow environment.
Days of isolation are behind us,
Pendemics don’t show courtesy to borders, neither do terrorist., important
thing is to raise global standards of living. 20th century has witnessed
incredible advancement and unspeakable tragedy. 1918 influenza epidemic killed
50 million people, WWII killed 60 million, in the same period infant mortality
reduced by 90 %, Maternal mortality 99 % and overall lifespan of humans have
jacked up more than 100 %. Cost of food
tumbled 13 fold, cost of energy 20 fold, cost of transportation 100 fold.
It is not a question of availibity but accessibility
. Abundance means providing every one with life of possibility and feasibility
not with life of extravagance. 174 peta watts (174 *1017) solar
energy hits our atmosphere, half reaches surface. While human beings utilize 16 terra watts.
The amount of solar energy falls on earth’s surface is 5000 times our current needs.
70 % of earth is covered with oceans, while 97% of water in oceans is salty. Large
chunk of 3 % water is stored in
underground aquifers. We should not tap this fossil water and use it
because it took millions of years for water to get stored in the form of
aquifers.
Currently one billion people are strapped for safe
drinking water and 2.6 billion lack access of basic sanitation, which leads to
more than half of world’s hospitalizations . Right now more people have access
to mobile phones than toilet.
Poverty is measured in 2 scales.
1. Absolute poverty: number of people living under certain incomes threshold.
2. Relative poverty: comparing individual’s income with average income of whole
economy. In 2008 people living below 1.25$ were considered as
living below poverty line. Today most poverty stricken American or Europeans
have indoor toilets, plumbing, telephone, electricity and running water. If
Somalians living below 1.25 $ get these
basic things abruptly become rich.
Providing Vitamin A supplement
removes the leading cause of preventable blindness from global health equation.
There is a key relation between
improvement of health and population growth. Key thing to curtail population
growth is to boost up health. Let’s look
at the Moroccon example . In 1971 when child mortality rate was high and life
expectancy rate was low, Moroccan women used to have 7.8 children on average. ,
after making strides in improving water,
sanitation, health care and women’s rights now Morocco’s baby boom is winding
down. Its average birth rate is 2.7 now.
While population growth is 1.6 percent because people are living longer
and healthier lives.
Traditional education system
developed in the midst of industrial revolution in 19th century. One size fits
all doesn’t always work. In Today’s educational system hierarchy is like math and
science top, humanities in the middle and art at the bottom. Creative ideas and
innovation are the ultimate resource in rapidly growing technological culture
and ever growing information- based economy. Providing sound foundation to our
children in critical thinking, literacy and math is the way to go in the
future.
Access to the strategic use of
ICT (Information communication technologies) have the potential to bring
economic development, poverty reduction, freedom of speech, free flow of
information and promotion of human rights. World has already witnessed the
changes in the last 10-15years.
According to Daniel Kahnemann
our reliance of heuristics sometimes lead to what he calls “Severe and systemic
errors” .
In 19th century London was becoming inhabitable because the
streets were heaped up with horse manure. There was no blatant fix to that.
They had no idea the car was coming soon and they would be gnawing at dirty
skies and not filthy streets.
Prosperity is best defined by
the time saved to achieve a task. The
true measure of something’s worth is the hours it takes to acquire it. Rural
peasant woman in Malawi, Africa spends 35 % of time farming food, 33 % cooking
and cleaning, 17% fetching clean water and 5 % in collecting firewood. Which
leaves less than 10% time to do something productive or to find job so that she
can come out of this vicious cycle .
In past wages were low and cost
of production was high. In 1880s people used kerosene lamp for which they had
to work for 15 minutes for an hour of light. Tallow candle in 1800s used to cost
6 hours of work and in 1750 BC in Babylon for sesame oil lamp it would have
cost more than 50 hours of work. Travelling from Boston to Chicago in 1880s took 2
weeks with stage coach and month’s
wages, Today it takes 2 hours and a day’s wage. Osborn executive bleeding edge
computer released in 1982 weighed about 28 pounds with cost over 2,500 $,
compared with first Iphone released in 2007 , which weighed 1/100th as much, 1/10th of cost, with 150 times
processing speed and 100,000 times more memory. On dollar cost averaging per
calculation I phone is 150,000 times more price efficient than Osborn executive
bleeding edge computer.
In the future new technologies
will be incorporated in our bodies. For
example Neuro prosthetics to augment congnition, nanobots to make amends for
the ravages of disease. Whole education scenario is changing, earlier it was
based on the rote memorization and regurgitation of knowledge, to the
encouragement of productive thinking, challenging authority, critical analysis
and innovation. For ultra low cost
fuels work is being carried out on
designer algae which feast on carbon dioxide and ocean water to produce oil.
Want gasoline, diesel, aviation fuel, give designer algae the proper DNA
instructions and let biotechnology do its wonders. With same technology
vaccines can be produced within 24 hours.
Exxon Mobil is investing in
renewable particularly in Bio fuels from algae.
Algae can produce 30 times more energy per acre than conventional bio
fuels like corn etc. This algae requires sunlight, carbon dioxide and sea
water. So we don’t need to compete for fresh water for agriculture. Corn
produces 18 gallons per acre per year, palm oil about 625 gallons and genetically
modified algae 10,000 gallons per acre per year. Which means 2 square miles which
is 1280 acres. At 10000 gallons per acre it is 12.8 million gallons of fuel per
year. Enough to fuel 26, 000 cars for a year. 18,750 miles are required to make
up for US total fuel needs for a year. Prices for solar power falling 5-6 %
every year and capacity is growing at a rate of 30 % per year.
In solar panels main cost is
expensive crystalline silicon. Companies are making silicon wafers thinner and
the cost of silicon is reduced to half within 5 years from 2005-2010. Engineers
at MIT have developed carbon Nano-tubes
to concentrate solar energy and
Photvoltaic panels 100 times more efficient . Instead for having photovoltaic
cells on your whole roof you could have tiny PV antennas that would drive
photons onto them . Now ordinary windows
can be turned into PV panels by placing thin film on. Which can produce
electricity from both natural and artificial light sources.
There is a lot happening in health sector. 3D printing
of human organs is underway for example human ear, urinary bladder etc. In
medicine we desperately need error-free, low cost, easy to use, point of care,
diagnostics designed for developing world, This all can be delivered through
LOC technology. Lab on chip (LOC) is another game changing technology under
development. Packaged into cell phone sized device. It will allow doctors,
nurses and patients to take sample fluids like urine, blood, sputum etc and run dozens of tests. Another upside of
LOC technology is to gather data because chips are online, the information is
uploaded to cloud and can be downloaded at an information gathering portal for
example CDC. Epidemiologists have the access to the incredibly rich data. Which
would transform and revolutionize healthcare
system from reactive and generic to predictive and personalized.
In future we will be able to
detect cancers by monitoring blood, urine, breath. Once detected remove them
robotically . Robot can find tiny cancerous
lesions, insert needle and oblitereate it, just like we do for cancerous
mole today.
Health care is heading towards P4 medicine which stands for Predictive,
personalized, preventive and participator. A new technology called RNA
interference which turns off specific
genes by turning off messenger RNA for
example A research was carried at Harvard in which fat insulin receptor was
switched off in mice which consumed plenty of calories but remained thin and
healthy.
Most of the countries have war
due to dispute on water resources. Jordan river is the bone of contection between
Jordan and Israel. 3,5 million people die due to water related illnesses every
year. There is nothing clearer than the direct link between health and
hydration. Every year human beings
consume almost 50 billions of fossil
water in the form of bottled water. It took tens of thousands of years for
water to accumulate in aquifers and it is not easily replenished. Fossil water
is the most subtle ecosystems in the world . 97.3 % of water on our planet is
too salty to be used. 2 % is blocked in polar ice and 0.7 % is available for
use. Sling shot water purifying system
is almost of the size of room refrigerator which can purify 1000 L of
water every day with same amount of energy as hair dryer. This system can be
run maintenance free for at least 5 years. Which cost 0.002 $ per liter of
water.
We are entering in an era of molecular manufacturing,
working at this scale changes the physical properties exclusively. On plumbing
front fixtures are built with self cleaning Nano materials that clear all clogs and wipe out corrosion.
, Nano based self healing pipes to repair leaks on their own.
There are people who consider genetically
engineered crops are frakenstein (GE
modified) food is sin against nature is pretty ridiculous. More than trillion
GE meals have been served til 2008 and not a single case of GE induced illness
has turned up. In India farmers adopted
BT cotton in 2002, since then india became from net exporter of cotton. BT
cotton increased yield by 50 percent and decreased pesticide use by 50 percent.
Right now we are enjoying first generation BT crops, soon we would not only be able
to grow crops in drought or in saline conditions but with ocean water. Crops fortified with zinc, iron vitamins A, E or D , which are virus or bacteria resistant.
Innovating techniques of farming
are emerging and helping to improve yield and provide out of season varieties. Vertical
farming first started by the soldiers in 2nd word war in barren islands, arid
deserts. In vertical farming soil is not required , water containing all the
required nutrients can serve the purpose. In Hydroponic technique plants are
grown in nutrient rich water solution. Aeorponic technique (Plants are
suspended in midair while food is delivered through nutrient rich mist) is
discovered in 1983 by Richard Stoner. Conventional farming uses 70% water on
planet, while Hydroponics are 70 % more efficient than traditional and Aeroponics
is 70% more efficient than Hydroponics.
By promoting Aeroponics we can conserve water use from 70% to 6 %.
Charities may give food to the
people, especially poorest of the poors and the underdogs. It’s the social
entrepreneurs who don’t just teach the people
to grow food, but to make money by growing
food, pour profits back into business, hire other people and contribute to the soceity. Bill
Gates donated 10 billion $ for vaccines, which is largest ever pledge made by a
charitable foundation to a single cause. In 2010 Bill Gates and Warren Buffet
announced “Giving pledge” in which rich billionaires were asked to donate half
of their wealth to charities with their lifetime. This pledge was joined by
George Soros, Ted Turner and David Rockefeller immediately. Later on joined,
Mark Zuckerberg, Dustin Markovitz, Paul Allen. Waleed bin Talal a Saudi prince
in 2015 announced to donate 32 billion$ for Philanthropy. By that time it was
the largest ever pledge made by any man/ organization in the world.
Thomas Edison once said “I have not failed , i have just found thousand
ways that don’t work” . Fearlessness is
like a muscle: the more we use it , the stronger it becomes. Bottom line is taking
risks which is an indispensible part of innovation. According to Amartya
Sen the nobel laureate , lack of food
and water, clothing shelter, education, affordable healthcare or sanitation
facilities are major sources of unfreedom. There is a strong case of optimism
for all of us for the marvelous technological possibilities of near and distant
future.
This writing is
inspired by the works of greats like Peter Diamandis, Ray Kurzweil , Matt
Ridley, Steven Kotler and my most respected Late Prof Hans Rosling.
