Dear all,
This blog perhaps is my most exciting blog ever.
I share my experiences at Singularity University at NASA Research Park, USA.
Singularity summer
Students
and diversity
Peter
& Ray & Firesides
Lectures
and insight by various faculties
Site
visits & Workshops
Team
Projects
Fun
Concluding
Remarks
Students and diversity
It was humbling to be among a highly diverse
class with students from 35 countries. Women represent 40% of the class and
that was positively a striking contrast to what I typically see back in India. It was
good to know that I was selected among the 3000 odd applications and was one of the 20
global competition winners.
Average age being 35, most of the students are
entrepreneurs; many of them have already started a company as early as 19 years
of their age. Sharing experiences and knowledge being a learning experience
every day, making you realize that ones achievement is not enough in comparison
to the rich background of the class, and that much has to be done in life.
All share a common goal - of creating an
impression on the global scene, and helping millions of people at the same
time.
Peter & Ray & Firesides
Most amazing part of the Singularity Summer
has been a close interaction with visionaries like Peter Diamandis and Ray
Kurzweil. It’s an immense pleasure to see the aura of passion for technology-change
for good in them, that it is nothing less than infectious.
Whether
its listening to Ray talking about increasing life expectancy, not worrying
about robots replacing human jobs, his predictions to the precise time and date
in future and how his positive influence of his father on his childhood made
him think the way he does was just an amazing experience. He however reiterated
that technology changes would not be able to eliminate the influence of sex
love and money. And he was serious about it.
While
Ray’s passion reflects in his unique style of calmness, Peter Diamandis just
exuberates with energy. Very approachable, and humble and it was an amazing
experience interacting with him. While everybody worries about privacy and
security due to Facebook and other social media sites, Peter has been positively insisting that such openness has been
the biggest neutralizer to threat of security everyone being there, creating a
more transparent community. He is a strong propagator of radical transparency and
reflected the same in his fireside chat with Philip Linden of Second Life
Virtual World.
The
Fireside sessions in late evenings of Peter Diamandis where he invited many
leading successful entrepreneurs for a close interaction is unforgettable.
Philip Rosedale
AKA Philip Linden of Second Life and his out of box ‘commit to pay’ crowd
source ventures like coffee&power, Eric Migicovsky of Pebble and how he
raised 10 million dollars on Kickstarter
site, Josh Kopelman’s marketing genius to rename a town to his company name ‘half.com’
which got sold to eBay later were amazing stories to listen to. It was
encouraging to hear from Philip Linden say that great ideas sound crazy or of disinterest few years before they happen.
Lectures and insight by various faculties
The core strength of the Singularity summer was the faculty and invited
guests to interact with the students. We had some amazing personalities
interacting with us on various subjects including exponentials of
Nanotechnology, Biotechnology, Robotics, Space, Health, policy law and ethics, Information
Technology, and many more. While we were excited to gain an insight into the
cutting edge technology, Marc Goodman reminded us of the dark side of the
technologies - be it stealing a persons DNA, or 3D printing Guns. It was chilling to hear his work
against terrorism & his insight on the technology used by terrorists in the
Mumbai attacks.
Very
approachable Salim Ismail discussed purpose of life, while Aubreyde Grey
discussed curing ageing and longevity. Ever-spoken Vivek Wadhwa updated us with
exponential technologies with his frequent Forbes articles and write-ups.
Eric Reis
of Lean Startup encouraged us not to be insecure of ideas being stolen, and instead
worry about execution, while Greg Maryniak told us about energy resources and
future of energy. Bob Richards discussed multiplanatary civilization, and Navin
Jain spoke about social enterprises. SR Das on economic modeling, Sushmita Gosh
from Ashoka Foundation, Catherine Mohir's concern on gradually shifting
agriculture land scape to developed countries, and Matt Ranen of GBN on
forecasting future were among many lectures which helped us form a vision for
our team projects which could help a billion people.
Hod
Lipson introduced us to 3D printing
allows printing customized implants, flexible batteries, bio cartilage, food
using any material
India and
Indian companies were frequently citied as good examples by many of the
faculty.
Interaction
with Hugo award winning science fiction writers like Verner Vinge, Greg Bear,
David Brin, was very engaging, I specially being an avid science fiction
reader.
Ben Goertzel
on Genral AI via skype spoke about problems with the Turing's Test & wozniak
cofee test and challenges to make AI better than humans.
Nano tech H2 fuel cells, terraforming desserts,
supercomputing, early disease detection indicates that this is a Nano decade
for sure.
Dan berry,
astronaut and space faculty shared his passionate story of his desire to be an
astronaut and how his persistence paid off.
The women
at Frontier Event was organized by Singularity University which had inspiring speeches
by women entrepreneur’s like Lakshmi Pratury of TED India and Kay Koplovitz
founder of channel-SciFi.
Peter Schwartz predicting space travel by year 2200 &
Bangladesh underwater by 2050, and exclusive revelation of Cambridge Decleration
by Philips Tevenlow that Humans are not the only conscious beings,
interaction with Dr Amy Lehman
of Lake Tanganyika Floating clinic were other highlites.
Insight
by Yasuyuki
Motoyama of Kauffman FDN that VCs invest typically within 70KMs of their base
was interesting to know.
An interesting coincidence
observed though listening to all these technologies was that ‘something is
happening at Global IT as an organism. Total transistors, web links are now similar
to a human brain synaptics now. Whether a super AI brain in making was
extensively discussed.
Site visits & workshops
Google site visit was a beautiful experience,
and I experienced up and close the great working environment it had. Interacting
with teams behind Google car and Google maps was exiting.
We visited Autodesk, flew real aero models, had
hands on with genetic sequencing during various site visits, built robots, moon
rovers, programed circuit boards, and much more.
Team project workshops by external faculty, marshmallow
challenge and an amazing session by Tom Wujeck & Maurice Conti was very
helpful in preparing for our team project.
The students made Ignite presentations, and I
did an ignite on use of the ‘Force Field’ as an answer to global grand
challenges.
Team Project:
My team project was called as ‘CARE9’ and addressed
Global Grand Challenge of Healthcare. The Team project integrates exponential
technologies like Artificial Intelligence and sensors to make an artificial
doctor to bridge the gap of inaccessible healthcare in remote corners. The
application also has an extension to monitor falls and fainting for care of
elders staying alone in developed world.
The team is strong and has diverse expertise
from fields of sensors, artificial intelligence, public health and policy,
Venture capitalists and others. Our team project already has got traction from
companies like Genentech.
Our Care9 team project was rated as the best
project with potential to reach 1 Billion dollar valuation in 10 years. We are
working towards formation of a formal company and making a business plan to get
funded.
Other exciting team projects in class included
Zero G drones for economical lab experimentation, Artificial Womb and many
others.
Fun
While were extremely busy, the diversity
called for a lot of fun. We were invited to the Tony Robbins Motivation event,
and many of us including me ended up doing the adventurous Firewalk. Tony
Robbins also came for a exclusive one on one interaction at the Singularity
University and it was very engaging.
We had various culture nights and the
Asian/Indian culture night was very popular.
I got to
participate in the annual San Fransisco Marathon, and had a lot of fun.
The class was very fun loving and ended up
with a surprising flash dance to entertain the stressed staff and management.
Video link -http://t.co/wQlEXKx6
We
had various competetions which my team won including a 1000$ Android
Application development opportunity, and other contests.
I got the
opportunity to test various products including a foldable electric Bike ‘Yike
Bike’
Concluding remarks.
The
Singularity Summer has been a great unforgettable experience. Thanks to
Ramanujan Bose Award that I could participate in this un-expectable journey of
unique over whelming knowledge of exponential technologies called as
‘Singularity University’
My
students in India have been following me and have insisted that I share my
experiences when I return.
I plan to
share such opportunities in schools and colleges as I feel the seed of
exponential technology to help one billion people need to be sown in the young
minds to affect in future.
Dr. Akash
S Rajpal
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