There were three interesting news items in the Times of India, Pune Edition, today. The first one talked about CO2 in atmosphere reaching levels not seen in a million years. The Mauna Loa Observatory recorded CO2 at 410.28 ppm. Slowly, but surely, the CO2 levels are leading earth to a permanent climate change and associated disaster. The second news item on the same page relates to Google Inc. which, after a decade of research, opened the self-driving cars to general public. Surely, this technology requires the brightest minds on earth to develop the necessary algorithms and technology. The third news item on the page shows a picture of Larry Pages’s flying car. Again a demonstration of brightest engineers at work for a project with investment from a very intelligent and rich investor!
It is indeed sad that the brightest minds are working on solving problems that hardly are problems in the first place. If anything, self-driving cars and flying cars will lead to more cars, more energy consumption, and more CO2 in atmosphere. In a certain sense, the innovations behind these technologies are hardly innovations when you compare them with the work of scientists and mathematicians a century or more ago. For instance, compare these with the work of Newton, Edison, Tesla, Leibniz, Bernoulli, Pasteur, Fleming and hundreds more which profoundly made a difference. I know that this can be a very controversial statement. I am not saying that it is ‘simple’ to develop self-driving cars; it is just not a problem for the brightest minds on earth to spend their time on. It seems that a majority of bright young people are attracted to study computer science and associated specializations. Who doesn’t want to work on cool stuff that also is very likely to lead to tremendous prosperity? However, climate change and associated topics are very often perceived as ‘old world’ and non-cool. Considering the pace at which CO2 levels are increasing, it is very clear that only a few bright people are working on that problem. They need lots more…..
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