On stage with Nathan Myhrvold and Greg Brandeau of PIXAR.
Some of my favorite quotes (memorable, simple and profound):
Reid Hoffman on the secret to success in startup ideas:
“You have to be contrarian and correct.”
Guru Singh’s feedback to Nathan Myhrvold’s pet projects:
“You must find people who are as ridiculous as you.”
From Forbes: “Jurvetson gave a brief presentation that proved to be inspiring to those hoping to play a role in changing the world. Talking about the technology curve that allows for the self-driving car to outperform humans in many situations already, Jurvetson noted that “my children may be among the first generation of people who will never learn to drive.” He quipped that “SpaceX will make it cheaper to fly around the earth in space than by air.” He also noted that “in the future, all cars will be electric” and with that, challenged the naysayers to argue the point after the session.”
Oh, and I just found the conference notes on this panel from my Skype friend Sten Tamkivi:
• Science is as close to magic as anything we have. When you understand a new aspect about how nature works, you can do something that looks like an utterly unfair advantage to everyone else.
• Humanity has never really had a positive arc heading to the future. It was more about ups & downs, bad and good seasons, cyclic on the field. Moore’s law has been heading up for 110 years now!
• Innovation is ideas having sex.
• SpaceX has lowered the cost of space flight by 10X – only natural if the underlying tech had not been touched for 25 years. It will get another 10X when you make rockets reusable – imagine throwing away a plane after every flight! It will be cheaper to fly around a world in a rocket on orbit than an equivalent plane. First for one person, then 7, then for 100.
• Already today there are more electric vehicle drivers in China than cars in the US. 1300 manufacturers, mostly 2-wheelers still. EV is inevitable, US spends $2B/day on car fuel.
• Drop in cost of reading and writing gene data is making Moore’s law look flat.
• Humanoid robots in production are replicating unskilled labor – learning and optimising what they do by watching the routine hand movements.
• When the Human Genome Project started, biology was not one of the “big science” areas for funding – natural counter pressure from incumbent areas to its rise.
• It we don’t discover anything surprisingly new beyond the Higgs boson from LHC, it will be much harder to raise funds for next $10B+ core science research project
• Recurring arguments on the “end of innovation” are flawed. Look at single country, single industry numbers. Look at median salaries not raising in US since 1975 – ignoring averages and growing poor-rich gaps. Ignoring structural changes in parallel (employment in agriculture -> manufacturing -> …)
• Killing a cow is the least effective way to make a steak.
• $100M satellites in orbit are less powerful than modern phones.
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