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Showing posts from January, 2014

The right to equality 2.0

In a quite interesting and thoughtful commentary, Sam Altman talks about some results of technology induced inequality in wealth: http://blog.samaltman.com/ technology-and-wealth- inequality?curator=MediaREDEF This is not hard to prove mathematically, even. The machine-to-labor scaling ratio has been increasing year on year. At some point, the compounded difference becomes so large that any differential productivity gains from getting the work done by humans will completely disappear for most functions for which humanity was being trained for millenia. One of my friends pointed out a political view by Orwell , an equally interesting read.   If we think about life and evolution, it is obvious that the history of the world has been a series of gradual accretion of features, interspersed by large scale asymmetrical compounding of differences in a short period of time that results in explosion of living forms in waves. If we believe the current data, society is starting t

Celebrating 2014

Why celebrate a year that is just beginning? Because celebration should be the beginning, the start of our contribution to the world. The year is going to give us a lot - happiness, cheer, fun, health, opportunities,  dreams, satisfaction, closeness. But to a lot of us, that isn't going to be all. To those unfortunate, the disenfranchised, the ones who are served by those derelict in duty, the ones who are subject to the complexities of a system that has become too diffuse to hear their stories - life is a stream of hope alone. Their stream of experience doesn't compute. It is a stream of hope that the world will notice them, that they are welcomed into the next year, that they have a better shot at what they dream about. The truth: the entire edifice of progress, the upper echelons of human experience, is carried on their backs. It is only because they are bowing down to carry the load, that the world is looking up. Celebrate this year now - so you can make it better

2Give or !2Give a happy new year.

An excellent question gets asked at any alumni meeting , whenever the subject of "giving" comes up: "what is the problem@Univ-FOO that we are trying to solve". Many detailed questions are asked about whether money is well invested, of course necessary. Many observations are done about whether the current process is conducive to utilizing the funds effectively. Instead, one way to look at this for ANY educational institution is:  " We should stand head to head among the world's most innovating, business creating, value generating institutions of learning". Are we there yet? Will being in the top#100 world universities serve that goal? Are we generating far more value for the govt. investment on us, than any other equivalent average institution of learning? I strongly believe many alumni of every great institution do create asymmetrical value. They also create businesses. They also innovate. But is that all we can do? A lot of