Merging of the Old and the New
A prosperous world that we all want to live in
I know three people with most distinct life experiences. They have all lived a life full of material comforts and strong family support.
A young child in a small village (Muzaffarpur, India) in one of the poorest states in India. He spent his time playing, and helping his family in the kitchen as food got prepared on a stove made out of mud and one that used coal to generate heat. He also helped his family grind spices on the rooftop of their village home using gigantic mortar and pastels made from stone. There was no gas, and almost no electricity available... so the household did not own or rely on electric equipments - they used coal irons for instance. He grew up with no cars, no refrigerator, no heat or air conditioning. He mostly used a family cycle, pedal rickshaw or a horse-buggy to get around. There were motor cycles and auto rickshaws once he grew a little older. His vegetarian meals consisted of all organic food from their garden and animals. You get the picture — he lived an all manual, all organic village life. His family was part of a closed-knit community. He spoke only in his native tongue, Hindi.
A teenager who grew up in one of the densest cities in the world (Mumbai, India). Today, the city boasts a population of over 20 million people. The city exposed him to the richest and poorest all at the same time. The city taught him to be street smart and a hustler. His family and the city offered him all the amenities and luxuries of modern life - electricity, gas, running water, refrigerator, blenders, TV, cars, buses, trains, planes and airports, etc. For most of his life in Mumbai, almost everything he used was made in India since the country was primarily a closed economy — this meant no Pepsi or Coke, and that potato chips were made and sold at the local bakery. Computers (with no internet) showed up in his late teenage years, and he created his first email by going online using one of those super horrible dial-up modems as he was finishing college. He mostly ate home-cooked meals but also dined out with his family from time-to-time in fancy restaurants. He mostly used public transit to get around. You get the picture - he lived a rich, urban life in a world mostly devoid of the internet and closed off from the rest of the world. He spoke English with his friends and Hindi at home with his family.
A young man who studied and worked in the USA (Rochester, NY, USA). He studied applied engineering and translational research, and then shortly after got married. He lived a rich and fulfilling life as a student on bare bones budget. In grad school, he also lived a life devoid of family (until he got married). He cooked most of his own meals as a student. He got around primarily by walking or hitchhiking before buying his first car. He graduated and he worked in one of the most premier research institutions focused on the development of electric vehicles. His life was always surrounded by the internet, computers, mobile devices. He enjoyed all that America had to offer — a loving and welcoming community, reliable internet, books and scientific journals in amazing universities and town libraries, grocery stores and malls filled with all sorts of stuff that offered too many choices, beautiful cars, apartments and house, salsa dancing, snowboarding, small quaint towns and canals. He had all the amenities and luxuries, and boy, did he use all of them all the time. You get the picture - he lived an all-american life full of ambition and energy, and full of stuff (in his belly and home) that he sometimes wondered if he really needed. He spoke English.
Some of you might be thinking that these three people couldn’t be more different than the other, but then some of you may have guessed that all of these three people is in fact the author of this essay! This is my life story. I am now 42 years old and live in Detroit. I feel like a millenial (I am a tad outside the edge of the formal definition) but I was born in to a life that people lived at the turn of the 20th century! I am a venture capitalist for General Motors. I invest in high-tech startups that are changing the face of transportation, mobility and industry.
I only realized a few years ago that I experienced a 100 years of living in my first 3 decades of being alive, and how this shaped my worldview. I have experienced life of two extremes — with and without cars, with and without pollution, with and without congestion, with and without simple local organic food, with and without good education and health care, and with and without economical growth. They both had their pleasures: I was around people that really enjoyed their lives in the absence of material comforts primarily because it was a life devoid of the maniacal commotion, congestion, pollution, pesticides, and all of this allowed them to live a simple life with a focus on family and community; I also saw people enjoying their lives with all of the glory of industrial progress and comforts primarily because it allowed them to be creative, ambitious and chase those ambitions with modern tools at their disposal. After almost a century of unhinged industrial growth, I see now that the two worlds — the ‘simple’ old and the ‘ambitious’ new — are merging.
People want to live in cities but are demanding an affordable life free of pollution and congestion, and vibrant with local communities. People demand being able to get to places quickly but they want to do so in a pollution-free and safe manner. People are demanding that their food be plentiful but be grown locally in its natural environment free of harmful materials and processes. People around the world want evermore and affordable electricity but they’d rather have it from clean sources. People demand that their stuff they need is made from sustainable resources and using sustainable practices. People want the comforts that come from their thingamajigger being connected to the rest of the world but they also desire for more connection themselves with their loved ones and their local communities. People demand a healthy, long life enabled by affordable and high-quality education and healthcare. People want their economies to flourish and everyone to be devoid of poverty while making sure that we take care of the people that help build these vibrant economies. I believe that these demands of a plentiful life with an expectation of vibrant communities on a sustainable planet are not mutually exclusive.
Given that I now look at the world via the eyes of the entrepreneurs (and an engineer), I feel that we are moving forward while, in many ways, going back in time (in a good way). I am somewhat skeptical of our ability to build this world but I am mostly hopeful and optimistic. I see science, engineering, technology and policy solutions as the path forward. These solutions, I hope, will allow me, and everyone around me, to simultaneously live the life of ambition and plentiful that I enjoy in America while enjoying the comforts of the simple, community-focused life that I experienced in my very early life growing up in my village in India.