| I find that it's important to periodically understand the big picture. I ask myself, are we doing better as a whole for society and can technology aid in that? I get inspired by reviewing the following things:
1. Child mortality rate over time:
https://ourworldindata.org/child-mortality?country= 2. DeepMind’s protein-folding breakthrough signals a promising decade for the science of proteomics. Most directly, being able to predict protein shapes will enable us to discover drugs more rapidly. 3. The cost to produce PV modules: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/solar-pv-prices 4. Advancement of geothermal as a potential energy source. The next generation of the industry, however, is a bunch of scrappy startups manned by folks leaving the oil and gas industry who think with today’s technology they can crack 3.5¢/kWh without being confined to volcanic regions. 5. Space exploration. The Space Shuttle entered service in 1981 and launched successfully 134 times. The payload cost to low-Earth orbit (LEO) was $65,400/kg. Today’s Falcon 9 is at $2,600/kg. 6. The improvement in adult literacy rates over time. So much more to do here, but a literate population is one that is more likely to contribute to our global productivity and success. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/literacy-rate-adults?tab=... 7. Quantum computing experiments and trails are doubling the number of qubits every couple of years right now. Quantum computing will cause a re-imagining of security and cryptography of digital assets if it becomes production grade. https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-59320073 I am sure there are many other examples. Even though I am an enterprise software guy working at Dell, the progress we made in the areas of technology that we get to work in have some contributing impact to all of these trends. |