What I gained from one of the most prestigious talks in the world of technology
Recently, I attended the MIT Tough Tech summit, one of the most prestigious events in all of technology. I was able to meet some of the foremost innovators in technology including, one of the coolest guys alive, Alan-Aspuru Guzik. I was one of only a few hundred able to attend this event and I feel that it is my duty to share what I learned with guys, so here are my top three takeaways from this event.
1. Technological innovation is best when both the Government and Private Industry works together
As many of the speakers assert, they tout the importance of the public and private sectors working together. Why is this so important? Well, if we want to speed up the technological innovation process, this partnership is key.
Technology is a key part of human development. Without advancements in technology, we would not be able to have sources of clean energy, an increased global connectedness, or even urbanization. But how did this technology become so widespread? Because the government helped these technologies become a part of our lives.
Entrepreneurs and businesses are great at creating new jobs for people and are crucial to reinvigorating the economy. They also bring in disruptive technologies that will help modernize our world.
Similarly, for the new, emerging technologies today, the public sector can become a great enabler for these new technologies.
By investing in the right industries, government can create new jobs and make it easier for businesses to innovate.
2. Investors are the key to making a technology startup
This brings us to our next point or investment. Usually, new startups do not have a lot of money and they aren’t able to put their technologies out into the world yet. This is where investors can do a lot to help
New technology startups are risky and have a lot of potential to fail. But, they also have a lot of potential to succeed and to create a truly disruptive technology.
So this makes investing in them risky and investors are usually wary of technology startups.
But I urge the potential investor who is reading this article, please invest in a tech company. If you do, and they end up successful, you will get a lot of money and their invention will help the world.
And to make matters better, according to Marketwatch, it is getting less and less risky to invest in tech companies. Usually, nowadays, tech companies are changing their business model to become more info oriented and are becoming less cyclical.
So, for a technology to survive in today’s world, it is needed for more investors to invest in technology startups.
3. Technology and ethics
Possibly one of the biggest topics during the Summit was that of technology and government regulation, especially when it came to companies like Facebook and Google.
Now, much of the controversy around Facebook and Google has been their use of private user data to run ads or push a political movement.
This topic is even more prevalent by the fact that technology is getting ever ore integrated into our own lives and user privacy is only the tip of the iceberg.
But, with reasonable regulations, technology can become safe and won’t become a hazard to public safety and privacy.
The best kinds of policy that could be implemented are policies that instead of breaking up tech giants like Google, Facebook, and Apple, as has been discussed, it is best to instill reasonable regulations upon them to make sure that they are not misusing user data.
Too much regulation upon tech companies can stifle innovation while too less can make technology dangerous. The middle path is the one to take
These are three of the main takeaways from my experience at the MIT Tough Tech Summit and I hope you enjoyed them. I feel like these topics are largely relevant to where we are going as a society and what the future holds for exponential technology.
