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For what it's worth, in my experience the people talking about big innovation, actually ARE extremely supportive of genuine, plausible efforts at producing plan

For what it's worth, in my experience the people talking about big innovation, actually ARE extremely supportive of genuine, plausible efforts at producing planetary scale improvements. In our case, we're trying to solve the economical energy storage problem (lightsail.com) These folks put their money where their mouth is, and helped out greatly when we needed advice or funding or connections. Particular people who helped us out and are known to publicly call for and support big innovation include: Vinod Khosla, Peter Thiel, Luke Nosek, Ken Howery, Bruce Gibney, Patrick and John Collison, Michael Vassar, Sam Altman, Elon Musk, Eric Schmidt, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Matthew Nordan, Nathan Myhrvold, Bill Gates --- By contrast, most of the other VC firms, and all of the banks, were much less receptive and we did not get anywhere with them. So I think people are at least trying to act consistent with their philosophy. Generally, these folks will try to support great groups doing potentially great things, if there is good chemistry. They can't do it all, of course. There are not that many of them. But they try! I think more of the blame should be on entrepreneurs and scientists who can and want to work in these areas but choose not to, and instead go into the hot software field of choice, or worse, undifferentiated finance. They should be encouraged to make some attempt at making the difference in the world that they want to see. It is not someone else's duty. If you can do something important, and you have the resources to make a good attempt, you should try, because you may be in a very unique position to do so, and it's incredibly thin on the ground in many important areas. There are incredibly few companies genuinely trying to make energy storage economical. There's only one, that I can tell, that's trying to make reusable orbit class rockets. There are very few trying to redefine personal computing. There are very few going after cures for cancer, broadly. There are very few effectively trying to make solar economical. There are very few well managed plug-in auto companies. There are very few trying to provide clean, low cost, distributed water. The list goes on. People working on these major problems keep bumping into each other socially. It does not take long. The population of such entrepreneurs and innovators feels like that of a small high school. This scares me, because there are many, many problems to solve, and many reasons not inherent to the problem or solution that any one company or effort could fail. There should be more efforts, more ideas, more entrepreneurs, more competitors. That would make me much happier, and feel much safer. At the moment, it feels like if the wrong few people are depressed, sick, or distracted, major world problems are just not getting solved, and the world is set back by as many days. --- I would welcome any hard data to the contrary.

eli_gottlieb 14y ago
Ok, so here's a fun question: where do I find a list of the Big Problems? Because when I look at the world, it seems to me as if most of the really Big Problems are not technological but social. In the end, the conversion to solar energy won't be a single man's heroic effort, it'll be the combined efforts of an entire society that finally decided to go solar. On the other hand, technological approaches to social problems seem like an excellent idea to me.
- harryh 14y ago
  Really? What do you wish you could do that you can't? Let's make a list of things: * I wish my body didn't start to break down as I get older. * Related to that there are a whole host of diseases and disorders that I'll probably get one of and die from one day. * I wish I didn't have to spend so much money on energy (not just directly on my monthly bill, but as part of the cost of almost everything I buy). * I wish my internet connection was 100x faster. * I wish I could travel to California from NY without having it sit on a cramped airplane for 5-6 hours. * I wish I had a thinking interface to computers instead of having to take my damn phone out of my pocket and peck at it to get it to work. * I wish my memory could be augmented in some way. I'm forgetting things all the time and that's really annoying. * I wish that learning new stuff wasn't so hard. Can someone build on of those machines they have in the matrix so I can just download up some knowledge. I want to know Kung Fu! * I worry about global warming. If everyone was as rich as Americans and lived like we do it seems like we'd have some pretty big problems. Can we do something about that? * I hate that when I order something from Amazon I have to wait so long for it to show up. Why can't a machine in my apartment just zap it into being instantly? They've got that in Star Trek and it looks pretty awesome. * Speaking of Star Trek, I'm bored of living on Earth. I want to go to the moon, or mars, or another solar system! How could we possibly do that? OK. That's just five minutes of random thinking. I'm sure that I (or you!) could come up with many many other Big Problems.
  - eli_gottlieb 14y ago
    What do you wish you could do that you can't? Ah, there's the thing. I've spent too long learning how to deal with Real Life. Actually, looking at it, many of these are social problems, as I had hypothesized. * Technical problem * Technical * Partially technical, partially an issue of almost deliberately building energy-intensive civilizations. * High-megabits and gigabit connections are on their way, but come with the social problems of installing new infrastructure. * Bullet trains, supersonic flight, and that sort of thing, but again, infrastructure and societal preferences. * On its way right now. * Memrise * In the research stages right now. * Again: social problems of Americans deliberately building energy-inefficient civilization (like suburbs, for example). * Ok, there's an interesting notion: can we make shipping and delivery better between vastly far nodes of a graph rather than using the center/periphery model currently employed by the shipping industry? The whole reason for center/periphery is that the fixed costs of each shipping vehicle are significant, making it far cheaper to distribute them through centralized shipping and mass distribution to the periphery areas. I've heard someone wants to revive the notion of "shipping tubes" through the ground, which would function a lot like packet-switched containerized shipping, but that's another infrastructure issue and may not be the optimal solution. * Social problems of building a carbon-nanotube-based space elevator, torus-shaped rotating space colonies, and generation ships. Well, that or teleportation, but the latter is far less likely.

eli_gottlieb 14y ago

Ok, so here's a fun question: where do I find a list of the Big Problems? Because when I look at the world, it seems to me as if most of the really Big Problems are not technological but social. In the end, the conversion to solar energy won't be a single man's heroic effort, it'll be the combined efforts of an entire society that finally decided to go solar. On the other hand, technological approaches to social problems seem like an excellent idea to me.

harryh 14y ago
Really? What do you wish you could do that you can't? Let's make a list of things: * I wish my body didn't start to break down as I get older. * Related to that there are a whole host of diseases and disorders that I'll probably get one of and die from one day. * I wish I didn't have to spend so much money on energy (not just directly on my monthly bill, but as part of the cost of almost everything I buy). * I wish my internet connection was 100x faster. * I wish I could travel to California from NY without having it sit on a cramped airplane for 5-6 hours. * I wish I had a thinking interface to computers instead of having to take my damn phone out of my pocket and peck at it to get it to work. * I wish my memory could be augmented in some way. I'm forgetting things all the time and that's really annoying. * I wish that learning new stuff wasn't so hard. Can someone build on of those machines they have in the matrix so I can just download up some knowledge. I want to know Kung Fu! * I worry about global warming. If everyone was as rich as Americans and lived like we do it seems like we'd have some pretty big problems. Can we do something about that? * I hate that when I order something from Amazon I have to wait so long for it to show up. Why can't a machine in my apartment just zap it into being instantly? They've got that in Star Trek and it looks pretty awesome. * Speaking of Star Trek, I'm bored of living on Earth. I want to go to the moon, or mars, or another solar system! How could we possibly do that? OK. That's just five minutes of random thinking. I'm sure that I (or you!) could come up with many many other Big Problems.
- eli_gottlieb 14y ago
  What do you wish you could do that you can't? Ah, there's the thing. I've spent too long learning how to deal with Real Life. Actually, looking at it, many of these are social problems, as I had hypothesized. * Technical problem * Technical * Partially technical, partially an issue of almost deliberately building energy-intensive civilizations. * High-megabits and gigabit connections are on their way, but come with the social problems of installing new infrastructure. * Bullet trains, supersonic flight, and that sort of thing, but again, infrastructure and societal preferences. * On its way right now. * Memrise * In the research stages right now. * Again: social problems of Americans deliberately building energy-inefficient civilization (like suburbs, for example). * Ok, there's an interesting notion: can we make shipping and delivery better between vastly far nodes of a graph rather than using the center/periphery model currently employed by the shipping industry? The whole reason for center/periphery is that the fixed costs of each shipping vehicle are significant, making it far cheaper to distribute them through centralized shipping and mass distribution to the periphery areas. I've heard someone wants to revive the notion of "shipping tubes" through the ground, which would function a lot like packet-switched containerized shipping, but that's another infrastructure issue and may not be the optimal solution. * Social problems of building a carbon-nanotube-based space elevator, torus-shaped rotating space colonies, and generation ships. Well, that or teleportation, but the latter is far less likely.