Category Archives: Achievement

Now Is the Greatest Time to Be Alive

I’ve been off grid the last few months working on a few projects which I’ll talk about in future posts. But something caught my eye this last week which I wanted to share in its entirety.
Last week President Obama published an article in Wired magazine titled, “Now is the greatest time to be alive.”

What he wrote ignoring the political sentiment kind of sums up what I’m trying to propel here in my blog, I feel obligated to share what he wrote, as it’s superbly written.

I find it refreshing and inspiring to have one of our great world leaders who understands and embraces science and technology express his views in such a noble manner.

“Now Is the Greatest Time to Be Alive”
By President Obama

We are far better equipped to take on the challenges we face than ever before. I know that might sound at odds with what we see and hear these days in the cacophony of cable news and social media. But the next time you’re bombarded with over-the-top claims about how our country is doomed or the world is coming apart at the seams, brush off the cynics and fear mongers.

Because the truth is, if you had to choose any time in the course of human history to be alive, you’d choose this one. Right here in America, right now.

Let’s start with the big picture. By almost every measure, this country is better, and the world is better, than it was 50 years ago, 30 years ago, or even eight years ago. Leave aside the sepia tones of the 1950s, a time when women, minorities, and people with disabilities were shut out of huge parts of American life. Just since 1983, when I finished college, things like crime rates, teen pregnancy rates, and poverty rates are all down.

Life expectancy is up. The share of Americans with a college education is up too. Tens of millions of Americans recently gained the security of health insurance. Blacks and Latinos have risen up the ranks to lead our businesses and communities. Women are a larger part of our workforce and are earning more money. Once-quiet factories are alive again, with assembly lines churning out the components of a clean-energy age.

And just as America has gotten better, so has the world. More countries know democracy. More kids are going to school. A smaller share of humans know chronic hunger or live in extreme poverty. In nearly two-dozen countries—including our own—people now have the freedom to marry whomever they love. And last year the nations of the world joined together to forge the most comprehensive agreement to battle climate change in human history.”

This kind of progress hasn’t happened on its own. It happened because people organized and voted for better prospects; because leaders enacted smart, forward-looking policies; because people’s perspectives opened up, and with them, societies did too.

But this progress also happened because we scienced the heck out of our challenges. Science is how we were able to combat acid rain and the AIDS epidemic. Technology is what allowed us to communicate across oceans and empathize with one another when a wall came down in Berlin or a TV personality came out. Without Norman Borlaug’s wheat, we could not feed the world’s hungry. Without Grace Hopper’s code, we might still be analyzing data with pencil and paper.

That’s one reason why I’m so optimistic about the future: the constant churn of scientific progress. Think about the changes we’ve seen just during my presidency. When I came into office, I broke new ground by pecking away at a BlackBerry. Today I read my briefings on an iPad and explore national parks through a virtual-reality headset. Who knows what kind of changes are in store for our next president and the ones who follow?

Because the truth is, while we’ve made great progress, there’s no shortage of challenges ahead: Climate change. Economic inequality. Cybersecurity. Terrorism and gun violence. Cancer, Alzheimer’s, and antibiotic-resistant superbugs. Just as in the past, to clear these hurdles we’re going to need everyone—policy makers and community leaders, teachers and workers and grassroots activists, presidents and soon-to-be-former presidents.

And to accelerate that change, we need science. We need researchers and academics and engineers; programmers, surgeons, and botanists. And most important, we need not only the folks at MIT or Stanford or the NIH but also the mom in West Virginia tinkering with a 3-D printer, the girl on the South Side of Chicago learning to code, the dreamer in San Antonio seeking investors for his new app, the dad in North Dakota learning new skills so he can help lead the green revolution.

That’s how we will overcome the challenges we face: by unleashing the power of all of us for all of us. Not just for those of us who are fortunate, but for everybody. That means creating not just a quicker way to deliver takeout downtown but also a system that distributes excess produce to communities where too many kids go to bed hungry. Not just inventing a service that fills your car with gas but also creating cars that don’t need fossil fuels at all. Not just making our social networks more fun for sharing memes but also harnessing their power to counter terrorist ideologies and online hate speech.

The point is: we need today’s big thinkers thinking big. Think like you did when you were watching Star Trek or Star Wars or Inspector Gadget. Think like the kids I meet every year at the White House Science Fair. We started this event in 2010 with a simple premise: We need to teach our kids that it’s not just the winner of the Super Bowl who deserves to be celebrated but the winner of the science fair.

We must continue to nurture our children’s curiosity. We must keep funding scientific, technological, and medical research. And above all, we must embrace that quintessentially American compulsion to race for new frontiers and push the boundaries of what’s possible. If we do, I’m hopeful that tomorrow’s Americans will be able to look back at what we did—the diseases we conquered, the social problems we solved, the planet we protected for them—and when they see all that, they’ll plainly see that theirs is the best time to be alive. And then they’ll take a page from our book and write the next great chapter in our American story, emboldened to keep going where no one has gone before.

To the next

Steve

SuperComputers Learn Deeper

The NVIDIA DGX-1 is a supercomputer that’s designed especially for deep learning. The “turnkey system” has GPU accelerators that can deliver the equivalent throughput of 250 x86 servers, plus an array of deep learning software, development tools and hardware. All together, the system can deliver “12X faster training than four-way NVIDIA Maxwell architecture-based solutions from just one year ago,” according to a NVIDIA press release.

“Artificial Intelligence is the most far-reaching technological advancement in our lifetime,” said Jen-Hsun Huang, CEO and co-founder of NVIDIA. “It changes every industry, every company, everything. It will open up markets to benefit everyone. Data scientists and AI researchers today spend far too much time on home-brewed high performance computing solutions. The DGX-1 is easy to deploy and was created for one purpose: to unlock the powers of superhuman capabilities and apply them to problems that were once unsolvable.”

A new class of intelligent machines will be borne that will learn, see and perceive the world as humans do. It delivers unprecedented levels of computing power to drive next-generation AI applications, allowing researchers to dramatically reduce the time to train larger, more sophisticated deep neural networks.

“Microsoft is developing super deep neural networks that are more than 1,000 layers,” said Xuedong Huang, chief speech scientist at Microsoft Research. “NVIDIA Tesla P100’s impressive horsepower will enable Microsoft’s CNTK to accelerate AI breakthroughs.”

As I mentioned in my first post of the year 2016 will be the year of AI.

To your success

Steve

Elon Musk – Can summon his car!

Having just returned from Elon’s home country in South Africa; I understand where he is coming from in terms of making our roads safer. Driving over there was erratic to say the least. ” Talk about being on your toes”

Tesla Model S and Model X owners recently got a software update introducing Summon, a feature that enables the cars to park themselves. With this release, CEO Elon Musk made a bold prediction: in 2018, this feature will work anywhere a Tesla can drive.

This is a glimpse into the (very near) future of car ownership, courtesy of Tesla: Your car will “…eventually be able to drive anywhere across the country to meet you, charging itself along the way. It will synchronise with your calendar to know exactly when to arrive.”

With the update, Musk also made a bold statement about the Model S. “It is probably better than human at this point in highway driving.” He qualified that by saying, “It’s certainly better than human at staying in the center of the lane [and] if it isn’t better than human yet, it will be in the coming months.”

To us all driving safer on the highways

Steve

100 Years of Age – Will be the new 60

As Technology has gathered pace this last 20 years ….Do you ever stop to consider that it’s kinda weird that we can now order a take away from our mobiles and yet no one can figure out how to stop (or at least reduce) the inevitable march towards death? Well, you’re not alone.

Science has been trying to figure out this whole ageing thing for a long time now, and a new development just could be one of those landmark moments in science history. According to recent reports, a new anti-ageing drug is going to be tested on human subjects starting next year. The potential result of this could mean that we, human beings, could extend our life spans to 120 years of age and be in good health to the very end.

The drug in question is a widely used diabetes pill called Metformin and costs mere pennies to make. Metformin helps to increase oxygen flow on a cellular level, thereby slowing the necessary cell divisions that keep our bodies both functioning correctly but ultimately lead to aging.

Belgian researchers have tested the drug on roundworms, and have had positive results so the next step is to do a human trial.

“I have been doing research into ageing for 25 years and the idea that we would be talking about a clinical trial in humans for an anti-ageing drug would have been thought inconceivable,” says ageing expert Professor Gordon Lithgow.

“But there is every reason to believe it’s possible. The future is taking the biology that we’ve now developed and applying it to humans.”

Imagine that… 100 will be truly the new 60 . Human longevity will be the new buzzword.

To your good health, living longer and immortal insight.

Steve

Metal – Lighter than Air

Imagine metal that’s lighter than air but still contains all its immense strength and robust characteristics.

Well those smart technicians at Boeing have announced a revolutionary new material called microlattice that is the lightest metal ever made.

It’s incredibly strong, but because it’s 99.99 percent air, it balances neatly on top of a dandelion

. Boeing says it created lightest metal ever

Ultra-light materials like microlattice enable streamlined, efficient designs for future airplanes, vehicles and buildings.

Weight savings are crucially important in aircraft manufacturing, since a lighter aircraft requires less fuel, which is airlines’ largest operating expense.

The Boeing 787 Dreamliner was a breakthrough commercial jet because it used light-weight composite carbon fiber material, rather than aluminum, to generate the best fuel efficiency in its class.

The microlattice looks like a sponge or a mesh, and is simultaneously flexible and very strong, according to Boeing. Should it become widely used, Boeing said the material could help airlines save huge amounts of money.

The main use of the material would be structural components, such as sidewall or floor panels of commercial jets.

The material was jointly developed by HRL Laboratories, a joint venture between Boeing and General Motors, in collaboration with Cal Tech and UC Irvine. The microlattice weighs only about one tenth as much as carbon fiber, and is actually slightly lighter than air itself, said Bill Carter, the director of the Sensors and Materials Laboratory at HRL.

It will likely first be used on space rockets that Boeing plans to build in about five years, and it should make its way into commercial planes about five years after that, said Carter.

These are the subjects I want to discuss in my Mastermind group. So come and join me.

To your success

Steve

Life Begins —————————–At The End of Your Comfort Zone

I love this one..its so true and yet most people just don’t get it .

The reason why is that it takes just as much effort to stay where your are …”Stuck”….. as it is to cross that eternal divide and make a change.

There’s a great meme you’ve probably seen this before – “Do what other people won’t so you can live like other people can’t” – This is so true ! Being an entrepreneur takes effort ..there’s no two ways around it. Effort in ….Freedom Out!

You expel just as much energy doing nothing and staying average as like everybody else ..and yet you’d be surprised that once you make the jump it becomes second nature and you end up using less energy to start something new. It’s like building a muscle …the more you exercise it the stronger it gets .

If you think of life as the journey towards our purpose, our true calling, is the fulfillment of our true potential.

Most of us live our lives within the limits that we have set for ourselves regarding what we are capable of achieving.

These limits are born out of fear, anxiety, social upbringing and staying with the pack. We dread what lies beyond what we already know. People are not even ready to imagine a situation where they overcome these fears & chase their dreams. They’re all to quick to find excuses as to why they can’t do something.

You need to get it into your head that there is no human endeavour that is impossible for you.

You don’t need to always stand on the sidelines and admire those triathon runners( I used to be like this). You could be running it too. You can write a novel. You can do a speech and receive a standing applause from admired followers( I’ve done this). You can learn to fly an aircraft( Done it already) ..you can start that business idea thats been knawing at you for years( yes do that too) .. you can a make a million dollars …..Yes Definitely.

The first step is to step over the fear. Get out of your comfort zone. Everything you have is within you.

Most people live out their lives in their comfort zones. Afraid to change, afraid to step out, afraid of the unknown, they stay where they feel safe and where they know all the rules of the game.

The best way to beat this is to embrace change even before it comes knocking on your door.

When you realize that you’ve been in the comfort zone for too long, when you recognize that your growth is stagnating, when you realize that you have not done anything new or exciting with your life for the last year. That’s the moment you need to make the leap of faith. There is a famous quote by Theodore Roosevelt which sums it all up ;-

” Far better is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take ranks with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the grey twilight of mediocrity that knows neither victory nor defeat”

One of the best ways to avoid falling prey to the lure of comfort is to use it against itself. Be aware of the time when life seems to be too comfortable. Look at the situation with the understanding that you are capable of achieving anything.

Most of the time, what we call comfortable is what our mind conditions us to believe is comfortable. Most of the time, we settle in our comfort zones, we are settling for that mediocrity. Those boundaries that your mind constantly reminds you to not cross, those were placed there by your mind itself, and they do not in any way represent your potential.

And when you recognize this, and deliberately push at the limits you have set for yourself, you start seeing that there is a whole new sphere of life out there, that is far more personally rewarding than what you were satisfied with earlier.

Make changes enormous changes to your life. Learn where you want to take your life and move in that direction. Start with a few steps at first ..maybe by altering your daily routine …shake things up a bit by introducing an element of risk. Do something everyday, each week that scares you …you’ll get a sense of feeling alive. I’m not suggesting you immediately go out & try sky diving… even though you’ll value life a whole lot more. But try things that raise your heart beat …go speak with a stranger, sprint to work instead of walk, drink water instead of coffee……

If that calls for a career change, do it. If that calls for a change in a relationship, do it. If that calls for a change in where you live, do it.

Make the changes that you were afraid to make all along.

Realize the limits you have placed upon yourself. Push them. Break them.

Let go of the limiting beliefs and thought patterns that don’t serve you in attaining your goals.

“Remember, what ever makes you comfortable… never lets you grow”.

To you all making a success of yourselves

Steve

Your Heads’ In The Clouds

This post will literally blow your mind …And I mean ….Literally!
It has been predicted recently that not far from now, our opportunity & capacity for learning and gaining knowledge will grow exponentially to stratospheric heights.

” In the 2030s,” said Ray Kurzweil( a brilliant scientist from Google), “we are going to send nano-robots into the brain (via capillaries) that will provide full immersion virtual reality from within the nervous system and will connect our neocortex to the cloud. Just like how we can wirelessly expand the power of our smartphones 10,000-fold in the cloud today, we’ll be able to expand our neocortex in the cloud.”
Having your head in the clouds” will no longer be a term used for ridiculing unrealistic thinking.

Just give a thought to it for a moment ……2030 is only 15 years away…
Directly plugging your brain into the internet? Upgrading your intelligence and memory capacity by orders of magnitude?
This post is about the staggering (and fascinating) consequences of that possible future.
The implications of a connected neocortex are quite literally unfathomable. As such, any list one can come up with will pale in contrast to reality… But here are a few suggested ideas to get the ball rolling.

Head-to-Head Communication
This will deliver a new level of human intimacy, where you can truly know what your lover, friend or child is feeling. Intimacy far beyond what we experience today by mere human verbal exchanges. Forget email, texting, phone calls, and so on – you’ll be able to send your thoughts to someone simply by thinking them.

Yahoo on the Brain – Instantaneous knowledge at the speed of thought!
You’ll have the ability to “know” anything you desire, at the moment you want to know it. You’ll have access to the world’s information at the tip of your neurons. You’ll be able to determine complecated maths formulae in seconds. You’ll be able to navigate the streets of any cities, naturally. You’ll be able to hop into a helicopter and fly it perfectly( no mean feat). You’ll be able to communicate in different languages effortlessly.

Scalable Intelligence
Just imagine that you’re in a bind and you need to solve a problem (rapidly). In the future world, you’ll be able to scale up the computational power of your brain on demand, 10x or 1,000x, 10,000X… in much the same way that algorithms today can spool up 1,000 processor cores on Web Servers.

Living in the Virtual World
If our brains can truly connect at high bandwidth, you will be able to circumvent our current sensory internal organs (eyes, ears, touch) to the point where brain’s sense of reality can be driven completely by a computer gaming engine – a multimedia world. Likewise, the connections would exist in the motor cortex of your brain as well. When you move your limbs, picture a corresponding set of virtual arms moving perfectly in the virtual world.

Extended Immune System
Ray goes onto suggest how we already have intelligent scientific devices, the size of blood cells that kill disease. They are called T-cells. They can recognize an adversary and attack it; In the future, nanorobots will be able to communicate wirelessly, download applications when new pathogens arrives, and attack cancer, cancer stem cells, bacteria, viruses, and all the disease agents. They can also work on metabolic illnesses like diabetes. They could also protect healthy levels of everything you need in the blood, including nutrients, and basically heal and fundamentally replace weakened organs.

Downloadable Expertise
The old derogatory saying “Jack of all trades, master of none.” Will be a thing of the past as we will become experts in everything – We’ll be able to do anything. Need to perform unexpected emergency surgery? Just download the ER doctor program. Need to learn a new foreign language? Download it. Want to repair your old car motor engine? Download the mechanic module. In fact, you probably won’t even need to download it (which takes up memory), you’ll probably just “stream” resources from the cloud.

Expanded and Searchable Memories
We’ll be able to always remember everything that ever happened to us (because we’ll store our memories in the cloud), and we’ll be able to search that memory database for useful information. When our memories will become searchable, we’ll also be able to make them contextual by cross-referencing our diaries, journeys, mediacal info, current news, weather conditions, and anything else that might be relevant to that particular moment in time.

A Higher-Order Existence
Ray talks about how a connected neocortex will bring humanity to a higher order of existence and complexity – expanding our palate for sensation, culture, humour, creativity, expression, and individuality. He says, “We’re going to be funnier. We’re going to be sexier. We’re going to be better at expressing loving sentiment. We’re going to add more levels to the hierarchy of brain modules and create deeper levels of expression. People will be able to explore very deeply some particular type of music in far greater degree than we can today. It’ll lead to far greater originality, not less.”

While this future may sound imaginary to many, let’s remember that exponential technologies are initially deceptive, before they become disruptive.
And today, there are many labs around the world working on molecular machinery, that allow us to edit our own genome, and brain-computer interfaces (through cortical implants and in the field of optogenetics).
So what if these fields of technological progress double every 18 months? In 15 years (2015 – 2030), we will have a 1,000-fold improvement over today. What does a future one thousand times better look like? Perhaps it’s what Ray predicts…
If this future becomes reality, connected humans are going to change everything…You’ll be able to fulfil your potential in every area of your life!
We need to discuss the consequences in order to make the right decisions now so that we are prepared for the long-term.
This is the sort of conversation that really lights my fire and one I’d like to explore further within a mastermind group. So come and join me.

To you all “slipping the surly bonds of earth” and soaring amongst the clouds

Steve

Turn Smog into Gemstones

I’ve just supported a great innovation on Kickstarter. The Largest Air Purifier Ever Built that Sucks Up Smog and Turns it Into Gemstones!

A very clever designer Daan Roosegaarde has unveiled the Smog Free Tower, a 23-foot air purifier that captures smog from the outside air and turns these smog particles into gemstones. The tower purifies 30,000 cubic meters of air each hour, and each gemstone is the product of roughly 1,000 cubic meters of air. Roosegaarde is currently raising funds via the crowdfunding site Kickstarter to cover the travel costs of transporting the air purifier to major cities like Beijing, Mumbai and Paris, with smog gemstone cufflinks and rings as backer prizes. So I’ll be getting a small cube to remind me about how I’m helping the planet by purifying the air in inner city environments.

The process taking place inside its walls powered by 1,400 watts of sustainable energy, which is comparable to a water boiler, and the studio says it hopes to one day integrate solar PVs into the design to power the process—which works not so differently than some ionic air purifiers. Roosegaarde explains; that the way it works is by charging the Smog Free Tower with a small positive current, an electrode will send positive ions into the air. These ions will attach themselves to fine dust particles. A negatively charged surface -the counter electrode- will then draw the positive ions in, together with the fine dust particles. The fine dust that would normally harm us, is collected together with the ions and stored inside of the tower. This technology manages to capture ultra-fine smog particles which regular filter systems fail to do.

I think this was an important project to get involved with because it demonstrates another example of how creative thinkers are transforming scarcity into abundance. This architectural feat appeals to me as its a blindingly obvious solution to a growing problem; your born with a fine set of lungs – it makesense to keep them clean. Unfortunately us humans through our industrial endeavours have polluted certain areas of the planet through the need of our ever expanding consumption of stuff; and this innovation marks a turning point to give something back to our congested communities. Environmentally it ticks many boxes and will set the scene for other concepts to support its success through crowdfunding, DIY innovators and other material based sciences. This is a project which has immense scalability; Can you imagine giant versions of these towers sucking in huge amounts of polluted air with the residue being used in the building industry or other sectors as a sustainable material.

This is truly exceptional and an example of an idea I get excited about and want to discuss. This really lights my inner fire. I hope this encourages you to comment & contribute about what could be next.

To your success.

Steve

The Scourge of Negative News – – – – – No good for an Abundant Mind

I don’t subscribe to a newspaper or online news service and have’nt done for over 20 years. Even though I have been priviledged to have worked for some of the best newspapers & broadcast networks on the planet. I still think the FT( Financial Times) is the best newspaper in the world. The reason being I’ll come back to later.

Did you know that humans pay over 10x more attention to negative news than they do positive news. The media knows this and feeds us the same addictive content day in day out.
I’ve built up my own resistance to it by filtering out the headlines that grab your attention with that cerebral message of scarcity. I’ve become adept with a trained eye at filtering out only the good stuff that matters.

But this negativity …It’s like a drug , It’s so unhealthy… The Amygdala a small gland in your brain responsible for emotional reactions ( your in built early warning system) responds to it like glue in a zombie like state. That whole feeling of overwhelm on scarcity, poverty, bad news, tragedy is what sells newspapers and we the public get suckered up into it. This is not balanced news reporting and the Red Tops ( Tabloids) know this.

News networks are run by depressed stressed out executives that realise they are losing market share to highly competitive, disruptive media aggregators. Chasing the ever decreasing advertising dollar to prop up the negative merry go round.

Wouldn’t it be great to have a news service that reports nothing but positive news of abundance, innovation, science, achievement, etc without the spin. How do you think your Amygdala would make you feel then … fantastic, great, on top of the world, full of energy, self belief. Imagine a news network that reports wonderful stories of “goodness” that nourishes your mind. On subjects like Artificial Intelligence, Human Innovation, Robotics, the latest 3D printed mobile phone etc. The abundance of opportunity that lays around us. That’s why I hold the FT in high regard as it reports news in an unbias way and says it like it is.

What I’m trying to say here is don’t join the pack and fill your head with scarcity thinking and suffer the “procrastination trap” like everybody else ; go get creative and nurture your mind. As the mind matters. Think about what you are putting into it. As Tony Robbins once said in one of his seminars. If you treat your mind like a garden “Do you want it full of weeds” or as a “landscaped masterpiece”.

Having an abundant mindset is going to get you out of the funnel of limitation. I can promise you that!

To your success.

Steve

Smartphones become Solar Panels

Transparent Batteries That Charge in the Sun Could Replace Smartphone Screens –

A group of smart Japanese techies have managed to improve the design of a transparent lithium-ion battery so that it’s now able to recharge itself when exposed to sunlight without the need for a separate solar cell.

The transparent battery was first developed by the researchers, led by Kogakuin University president and professor Mitsunobu Sato, back in 2013. The electrolyte used for the battery’s positive electrode is made mostly from lithium iron phosphate, while the electrolytes used for the negative electrode include lithium titanate, and lithium hexafluorophosphate a stronger chemical bond at subatomic level.

Those are all common ingredients used in Li-ion rechargeable batteries, but the thickness of these electrodes are just 80 to 90 nanometers, which allows a lot of light to pass through and makes these batteries almost completely transparent. Imagine that! Where else could this technological discovery be applied.

But by changing the chemical makeup of the negative electrode, the Japanese researchers have found a way to make these transparent batteries now recharge themselves in the presence of sunlight, or other bright sources of illumination, say a lamp or street light.

This is important because future iterations of this battery could become smart mirrors for buildings and vehicles that can auto-dim when it’s bright outside during the heat of the day, but also store power as they’re recharged by the sun. And as an extension of that idea, one day your smartphone’s display might even serve as an additional battery, using sunlight to charge the device whenever you’re outside.

Harvesting energy is becoming more and more portable. Have any ideas to join in the discussion?

Whats the next disruptive vision that will enter the solar market place?

To the next

Steve