Ride the Wave

The 50s was the decade of colour TV and nuclear technology. The 60s the decade of the space race and mainframes. Then came the 70s and the era of personal computing, a computer in every home. The 80s was the decade of synthpop and the CD, the beginning of digital music whilst sowing the seeds for the internet. The glorious 90s was the era of the internet and the dot-com boom. After the bust, the 2000s were the start of the mobile and social media era. The 2010s was the decade of cloud computing, software eating the world and data; lots of data. We’ve yet to see what the 2020s will be, but let’s go with AI. Each invention a marginal revolution (with apologies to Tyler Cowen), which laid a foundation or knocked down a barrier to enable everything that followed. We’ve progressed from innovation in the world of atoms to innovation in the world of bits.

Now, if you are a smart kid going to college, your decisions are influenced heavily by the world around you. It’s why more students in college study computer science than nuclear engineering. It’s why the location for more and more students is not consulting or investment banking but tech. It’s why more and more people want to go to Silicon Valley and start a startup.

They’re riding the wave. Don’t go against the wave. It’s a good strategy. 

They are not hamstrung by the thoughts of how things used to be. It’s a superpower to lift tradition and dogmatic thinking from your shoulders. Each generation can reinvent the world. All prior generations have to do is not get in the way.

Don’t go against the wave: it holds at the individual level, the micro level and the macro level. Invest in successful individuals. Not those who aren’t. Join a company that will grow, build great products, and be profitable. Not one who won’t. Live and work in a country or economic region that is growing and thriving. Not one that isn’t.

But that may seem boring. 

After all, you want to leave a lasting mark on the world, right? You want to forge a path that no one has forged before. If you offered me a one-way trip to Mars right now (I don’t want to pay for my ticket), I’d take it. Even if I knew I wasn’t coming back. The opportunity to be the first human on Mars leaves your name in the history books. Move over Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, there’s a new kid in town.

Every so often, a person or a group of people come along and create a wave: Gates, Allen, Jobs and Woz in the PC era. Jeff Bezos, Larry Page, Sergey Brin and Jack Ma in the 1990s internet era. Zuck in the social media era. There’s plenty making waves in the AI era. There are a select few who make waves their entire life: John von Neumann, Elon Musk, Albert Einstein. Some innovations are so significant that the wave becomes a tsunami.

In the path of a tsunami, you’ve got no chance. It cannot be stopped. These are the innovations that change the world.

You’re asking yourself, well, what does this mean for me? I happen to think most advice is useless; in particular, a lot of business advice is self-congratulatory nonsense masked as wisdom. But if you are a student coming out of college, then study a science or mathematical subject, follow your heart and do what you love. But don’t go against the wave. Don’t try to stop it. Go into tech, go with the wave. Science and technology are what moves the world forward.

And what if you want to progress the world of atoms? It’ll be hard, but dream big and do it. Because, if you combine the world of bits and the world of atoms, then you just might be the world’s first trillionaire.