The science is strong. Our imagination is weak
In Silicon Valley, where I live, the world’s most brilliant minds and wealthiest investors chase the shallowest dreams. The valley that once gave us the personal computer and the internet has become a carnival of hype. AI startups promise to “revolutionize” everything. Yet they mostly generate synthetic influencers, fake news and shallow automation.
Venture capitalists pour billions into algorithms that mimic intelligence but rarely advance it. We have turned the greatest technology engine in history into a factory for distraction.
This is not because technology has failed us – it is because imagination has. When America put a man on the Moon in 1969, its onboard computer had less power than the greeting cards that sing Happy Birthday. What took us to the stars was courage and purpose. Those have gone missing – somewhere between the venture-capital term sheet and the app store.
Human progress once crawled forward: millennia from pottery to plough, centuries to calculus, decades to electricity. It now accelerates faster than our minds can grasp. Over the last 100 years, technology has advanced beyond anything our forebears could imagine. That’s nothing new: humans failed to understand exponentials then, just as they struggle to understand them now. People are hardwired to the familiar: they cannot grasp how fast everything is advancing. Thus, we remain prisoners of habit, chasing short-term returns while ignoring the exponential tools in our hands.
Even India, my native country, is falling into that trap. Its great cities choke on toxic air and drink poisoned water while entrepreneurs build yet another delivery app. Every time I visit, I get sick from drinking the water, because of the polluted waterways, and the mass-scale industrial dumping in the rivers.
Water testing is needlessly slow and cumbersome, but the science exists to make it instant. That’s why my company wants to use its technology to examine the nation’s water supplies. The Yamuna, the Ganga, then across India. The cost of using that technology for 30 seconds is almost nothing. In just one minute we can identify the composition of the liquid, be it drinking water, urine or blood.
The technology to fix so many societal problems already exists. They could cover Delhi and Mumbai with smart sensors that monitor every drop of water and every breath of air, in real time and at minimal cost. But most entrepreneurs lack the will to apply their brains to what truly matters. The silver bullet is there, but inventors misfire. They set their sights on solutions we have already solved.
Still, there is hope. Unlike Silicon Valley, India’s innovation story is young – and its moral compass still intact. I have seen young scientists and engineers who want to cure disease, clean water, and rebuild trust in technology. They believe that science must serve humanity, not manipulate it. Rooted in ethics and purpose, they can fuse ancient wisdom with modern science, and lead the world in the responsible use of AI and deep tech.
We have crossed the line where technology is the limit. The only barrier left is our ambition – and our imagination.
Vivek Wadhwa is author of The Immigrant Exodus: Why America Is Losing the Global Race to Capture Entrepreneurial Talent
