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These ideas, and the idea that they are frighteningly ambitious, clearly come from the personal experience of living in northern California and dealing with tec

These ideas, and the idea that they are frighteningly ambitious, clearly come from the personal experience of living in northern California and dealing with tech startups most of your time. These are largely first world problems. Here are some ambitious ideas: - distributed power generation that's cheap enough and renewable enough so people in rural parts of sub-Saharan Africa don't have brown outs anymore. - synthetic food generation a la star trek - desalination that is cheap enough for a farmer in Mozambique to do himself There are more, lots more. People outside the valley bubble have real problems.

wmeredith 15y ago
Solving first world problems gets you first world ROI. Y-Combinator is an investment firm. I'm not judging, I don't have a dog in the fight. But I'm pretty sure that's why you don't see stuff like stopping brown outs in rural sub-Saharan Africa on this list. There's no first-world money in it.
- sciolizer 15y ago
  It's a trade off. There's a lot more money in the first-world. But there's a lot more users in the third-world. That's why the third-world is called the majority-world.
DennisP 15y ago
Check out the Google Solve for X videos. One presentation is about a clever new idea for cheap desalination: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=R63zYZZuRvQ# http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=R...! Another is about synthetic food...the presenter said his company could feed the entire world from an area the size of Rhode Island: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ri5dssUsYyA# http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=r...!
Nervetattoo 15y ago
I think the best ideas improves first world issues while fixing third world problems. Energy generation for example, if you managed to figure out how to generate power/propulsion using a cheap and small physical object and a renewable resource you both solves first world issues and third world problems. Education needs to catch up with the world in the first world, but if you do that in an async manner online then you can at the same time solve the problem with education in africa.
rmc 15y ago
What if we made people in subsaharan africa as rich as europeans & americans? Then the solution to "brown outs" there is the solutions to brown outs here. Better infastructure.
- tomjen3 15y ago
  If you can solve that problem, you have will have done the world an amazing service, outperforming even Norman Borlaug, and the idea is certainly ambitious in its scope. One question though: how would you go about doing it?
  - rmc 15y ago
    Let's study history and see how Europe and America got wealthy and try to do that.
    - bergie 15y ago
      One big deal in Africa is logistics. The railways of the colonized era were designed from quickly moving raw materials to ports. And the new Chinese-built roads are no different. The end result is that trucking food between cities and villages not that far away from each other is crazy slow, dangerous, and profitable. Not much differently from trans-Pacific trade some 100-150 years ago. If somebody would come up with a transport solution that wouldn't require massive infrastructure investments (for which there is no money), and which would be safer and faster than current trucks, Africa could start changing very quickly. And there would probably be a decent profit in that. Where to start? Could locally-produced, solar-powered small airships do the thing?
      - rmc 15y ago
        Airships? How did Europe go from crappy roads to good roads? Not with airships.
        bergie 15y ago
        Europe had a governance model where infrastructure investments didn't end up on Swiss bank accounts. The point here is to figure out a way to fix logistics in a way that individual entrepreneurs can do it.
netcan 15y ago
The University problem is potentially a "3rd world" problem, especially inasmuch as you interpret it as a learning/teaching problem. Non consumption is traditionally a good place to start and I would suggest that high school & junior university level is the most disruptive place to start. Non-consumption of senior high school to junior university level education is something in great abundance in poor countries. There is also probably a more incentive for potential students to play along in poor countries. A 9th-10th year dropout is more likely to be in that position because of access or soem other problem that technological innovation is good at dealing with. More importantly, the ROI on those 2-4 years of education is probably much higher. If you were to go after job skills/ training as the point of attack (as opposed to general education) poor countries are also a great place to start. For a lot of skills there is demand at the bottom: bookkeeping, graphic design, programming, etc. Bringing a person making <$1-$2 per hour to a point where they can command a $3+ is fundamentally doable. That's a big incentive.
bh42222 15y ago
distributed power generation that's cheap enough and renewable enough so people in rural parts of sub-Saharan Africa don't have brown outs anymore. desalination that is cheap enough for a farmer in Mozambique to do himself I am sorry, but you can not fix broken states with technology. Want to help Mozambique and sub-Saharan people? Find a way to turn their governments into well working ones. This is at once infinitely more difficult and also the only thing which will really solve the common developing world problems.

wmeredith 15y ago

Solving first world problems gets you first world ROI. Y-Combinator is an investment firm. I'm not judging, I don't have a dog in the fight. But I'm pretty sure that's why you don't see stuff like stopping brown outs in rural sub-Saharan Africa on this list. There's no first-world money in it.

sciolizer 15y ago
It's a trade off. There's a lot more money in the first-world. But there's a lot more users in the third-world. That's why the third-world is called the majority-world.

DennisP 15y ago

Check out the Google Solve for X videos. One presentation is about a clever new idea for cheap desalination: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=R63zYZZuRvQ# http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=R...! Another is about synthetic food...the presenter said his company could feed the entire world from an area the size of Rhode Island: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ri5dssUsYyA# http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=r...!

Nervetattoo 15y ago

I think the best ideas improves first world issues while fixing third world problems. Energy generation for example, if you managed to figure out how to generate power/propulsion using a cheap and small physical object and a renewable resource you both solves first world issues and third world problems. Education needs to catch up with the world in the first world, but if you do that in an async manner online then you can at the same time solve the problem with education in africa.

rmc 15y ago

What if we made people in subsaharan africa as rich as europeans & americans? Then the solution to "brown outs" there is the solutions to brown outs here. Better infastructure.

tomjen3 15y ago
If you can solve that problem, you have will have done the world an amazing service, outperforming even Norman Borlaug, and the idea is certainly ambitious in its scope. One question though: how would you go about doing it?
- rmc 15y ago
  Let's study history and see how Europe and America got wealthy and try to do that.
  - bergie 15y ago
    One big deal in Africa is logistics. The railways of the colonized era were designed from quickly moving raw materials to ports. And the new Chinese-built roads are no different. The end result is that trucking food between cities and villages not that far away from each other is crazy slow, dangerous, and profitable. Not much differently from trans-Pacific trade some 100-150 years ago. If somebody would come up with a transport solution that wouldn't require massive infrastructure investments (for which there is no money), and which would be safer and faster than current trucks, Africa could start changing very quickly. And there would probably be a decent profit in that. Where to start? Could locally-produced, solar-powered small airships do the thing?
    - rmc 15y ago
      Airships? How did Europe go from crappy roads to good roads? Not with airships.
      - bergie 15y ago
        Europe had a governance model where infrastructure investments didn't end up on Swiss bank accounts. The point here is to figure out a way to fix logistics in a way that individual entrepreneurs can do it.

netcan 15y ago

The University problem is potentially a "3rd world" problem, especially inasmuch as you interpret it as a learning/teaching problem. Non consumption is traditionally a good place to start and I would suggest that high school & junior university level is the most disruptive place to start. Non-consumption of senior high school to junior university level education is something in great abundance in poor countries. There is also probably a more incentive for potential students to play along in poor countries. A 9th-10th year dropout is more likely to be in that position because of access or soem other problem that technological innovation is good at dealing with. More importantly, the ROI on those 2-4 years of education is probably much higher. If you were to go after job skills/ training as the point of attack (as opposed to general education) poor countries are also a great place to start. For a lot of skills there is demand at the bottom: bookkeeping, graphic design, programming, etc. Bringing a person making <$1-$2 per hour to a point where they can command a $3+ is fundamentally doable. That's a big incentive.

bh42222 15y ago

distributed power generation that's cheap enough and renewable enough so people in rural parts of sub-Saharan Africa don't have brown outs anymore. desalination that is cheap enough for a farmer in Mozambique to do himself I am sorry, but you can not fix broken states with technology. Want to help Mozambique and sub-Saharan people? Find a way to turn their governments into well working ones. This is at once infinitely more difficult and also the only thing which will really solve the common developing world problems.