I said it was coming :)

 

As you can tell from what I have posted, I have been introspective and nostalgic as of late.  I have spent a lot of time in my head, trying to remember things from my life.  Honestly, I mean trying.  I sometimes think we remember the things we are reminded of through pictures, movies, etc; and we remember the things that were extreme (negative or positive), but the stuff in the middle seems to get lost.  As I am trying to remember things, like my mother and father at a younger age, my siblings, and even time with my friends, I am struck with the thought of, why didn't I listen to all those teachers about keeping a journal! 

 

I am serious about that.  I have some written items and notes, a lot more from the last few years than from the years prior, but I regret that I didn't keep more notes about my life.  So, that is one thing that the teachers in my life were right about.  You know what, they were right about a lot of things and by the way, built the foundation for me to spend a life learning.  Hell, as I write this, I am listening to Jensen Huang (Nvidia CEO) talk at the keynote for GTC.  I know that a lot of people my age don't want to learn new things, they wouldn't want to go back to college, and some even think that education, especially post-secondary, is unimportant. 

 

That is what this post is going to be about, education, education and the USA.  I'm also going to be brutally honest – We are not the leaders in everything and nothing about being born in this country makes you automatically smarter or more capable than any other human being.  If you need to, read that last sentence again.  I will get to the education item, but I want to set the stage for this conversation.  American exceptionalism is blinding you, I know this, because before I became an educated, well-traveled, individual – I was blind. 

 

What I mean by that is, if you had asked me at the age of 12, I would have told you Horseheads, NY was the greatest place to live (I would still hold up the beauty of the southern tier to anywhere – especially in the fall), that the US was the greatest and strongest country, and it was the best at everything.  Hell, look at all those gold medals and we beat the USSR in hockey – holy shit, we are amazing!  You see, when you don't expand your mind and your world, you find it hard to accept that we are all the same and that the major breakthroughs in technology, science, and medicine have come from the global US. 

 

Now, before you jump on your American exceptionalism horse and ride into my saloon guns a blazing, yelling shit like, we made the bomb!  I want you to think about the names of most of those scientists and where they were educated.  Honestly, off the top of your head, pick out some modern scientists you know and then research where they were educated and where they were born.  I'll start – Stephen Hawking: Born in Oxford, UK and educated at Oxford.  Charles K. Kao: Shanghai, China and educated in Hong Kong and the UK.  And one more, Tim Berners-Lee (if you don't know him, you still love what he made for you): London, UK and educated at Oxford. 

 

Now, I know that you all don't worship intellectualism as I do, but, no offense, you should.  You see education is what will drive us forward.  Don't get me wrong, I think the trades are extremely important and you can make a good life, career, or business with them.  However, the trades and modern improvements in those trades are the result of science (I am not going into to all of them, but you can Google/LLM/Encyclopedia that shit yourself.  Hell, 90% of you haven't even read this far).  My point is that brains are not American, they are human.  Smart people come in all shapes and sizes, but they all need guides to get to be the next Stephen Hawking and why are these amazingly smart, well educated people important, and why is it important we are educating our youth?  Ask that supercomputer in your hand. 

 

All kidding aside.  Nvidia just announced an AI supercomputer that can do 1,000 trillion operations per second (TOPS) and it fits in the palm of your hand (tiny form factor).  Fuck, do you think Eli Whitney is inventing that shit in his barn?  When you envision the person that is designing the next generation of microprocessor, what do they look like?  When you envision the person that is writing code for a large language model AI or neural network, what do they look like?  Where are they from? Where were they born? 

 

Another question I can ask is, do you have any close friends that are capable of doing the math associated with quantum physics and quantum computing.  I'll be honest, my wife is pretty damn smart, but...  Funny stuff aside, you probably don't.  In fact, if I asked you to do some of the most difficult math you'd done in high school or college, you may struggle with it.   However, nearly all the things you use today benefited from some egg-head, intellectual, that invented it (and yes, there is such a thing as over engineering). 

 

My big point here is, we aren't as "all that" as we think we are, and honestly, we are falling behind because we don't take education seriously.  Don't take my word for it, the H1B1 VISA exists because of this very reason (you can do a quick search and find that infamous Elon guy telling you the same thing):  There aren't enough really smart people going to school and getting the appropriate education to work in high tech industry within the US.  I'm not talking about help desk here people, I am talking about fucking egg-head, no social skills, intellectual power house geniuses.  There is a lot of nature and a hell of a lot of nurture needed to get to scientific breakthrough and 50% of the USA running around yelling, "you don't have to go to college" doesn't help.  Hard work doesn't equal success - dedication, perseverance, luck, and fucking education does.  I'm serious, how many people do you know that changed their majors because they didn't want to do the work, say Calculus I or Calculus II?  I know, they really wanted that degree in communications not that degree in electrical engineering.  You know it, you don't want to admit it – high-end education is hard and a lot of work.  Maintaining that level of knowledge is hard and a lot of work. 

 

Something else you know is that major medical, science, and technology breakthroughs (BTW, this includes, smart weapons, etc – I hate this usage of tech, but some people like to tout this stuff) require well educated people across a spectrum of fields from all those areas.  Think about what it takes to make a medical science breakthrough.  Teams of people educated in medicine, biology, chemistry, technology, and all slew of others educated in finance, etc.  Please, find me a company full of only American high school graduates that have created a major scientific breakthrough in the last 20 years, I'll wait.  Oh, while you are scouring the WWW to prove me wrong, please give some consideration as to who made, invented, supports, creates, and secures the global infrastructure you are using to get that information. 

 

First, you want America to be strong, education is that path because your rugged individualism is nice, but it isn't going to cure disease or invent the next major breakthrough (this include military items folks), but it is a good excuse for why you didn't give the effort to become a world renown scientist. 

 

Second, we are stronger together and it is easier to move humanity forward if we work together.  The science and breakthroughs that have occurred in modern history is the result of a global effort.  If you have never worked at a company that hires globally or brings in scientists from all over the world, you are not aware that breakthroughs are the result of diversity of thought.  In fact, many times we connect the company to the breakthrough without knowing the actual people that did the work – people...  

For now, I'm good (MMGA)

- JJ