RESOURCES FOR BETTERING YOURSELF

by Ed Maguire

How do you become smarter, healthier, happier, more successful, wealthier, more fulfilled? What tools, systems, insights or advice are most useful?

The category of self-help and personal improvement books and videos available numbers in the hundreds of thousands – a quick search of Amazon’s self-help category reveals over 546,000 books that fall under the self-help category. There are many resources to help people deal with illnesses, tragedies, additions, stresses, difficult life circumstances. These are typically focused on solving specific challenges (often enhancing or substituting for therapy, counseling or support, not groups.) That's what I am referring to here.

Self-improvement literature has been a personal interest of mine for quite a while. This is a particularly American genre, with origins that extend back to Ralph Waldo Emerson and the Transcendentalists in the mid-19th century. Tony Robbins is perhaps the most successful and best known American self-help guru, but there are loads of others that specialize in helping improve mind, body, being more successful at work, being happier…There’s an element of frontier spirit in the idea that anyone can improve themselves, or start afresh through self-empowerment.

One of the first books of this genre I read was Dale Carnegie’s “How to Win Friends and Influence People” which I first read as a teenager. In this book written in 1936, Dale Carnegie illustrates his lessons by telling his own stories. The crux of the book is that being interested in others, and getting them to reveal their passions and interests is the quickest way to find common growth with people, the first step toward building relationships and trust. This is a book that in my view should be required reading for anyone making their way into the world.  It’s a fundamentally optimistic book, a quick read,  with immediately practical tips that are relevant for a lifetime. Another one of his books is How to Stop Worrying and Start Living. This is a book that I’ve found useful to return to from time to time when I need a mental boost or find myself feeling stressed.

I started digging deeper into the genre in 2007-2008 as I was listening to some Tony Robbins recordings he made reference to a number of his own sources that had helped him develop his own philosophy of self-empowerment.  The granddaddy of them all is Napoleon Hill’s “Think and Grow Rich” which was written in 1925 and has remained an essential classic to this day. Napoleon Hill was a fledgling reporter who got the chance to interview the legendary industrial baron Andrew Carnegie, who made him an offer to follow him around for a year, with no pay or guarantee of any remuneration, in order to learn the lessons of success from him – and over 500 others that he interviewed. Hill’s wisdom has proven powerful and enduring. Using a folksy, homespun style, Hill laid out methods and processes to help people become successful.  You can see him in this 1954 video here.

In my experience, there’s a common thread that emerges from a lot of self-help literature: “what you think becomes real”. It’s a simple concept, explored in literature, religion and spirituality and increasingly in hard science. A recent popular example is Rhonda Byrnes’ “The Secret”. It’s what you think about, and where you focus that manifests in other parts of your life. Thinking about the right things, in the right way, is the “hack” to improve your life.

So my two recommendations for anyone starting down the path of self-improvement would be  (if you haven’t already) to read “Think and Grow Rich” and “How to Win Friends and Influence People”. These are time-tested, clearly written and inspirational.   You’ll be better for it. 

Ed Maguire has worked as an equity analyst covering the technology sector since 1999 for a variety of firms including CLSA Americas, Merrill Lynch and CIBC. Previously he led sales for independent music distributor Twinbrook Music while working as professional musician performing on bass, violin and keyboards, composing, arranging and producing a variety of styles of music. Ed holds a B.A. in Music from Columbia and an M.B.A. from Rutgers in Finance and Management Information Systems. He lives in Millburn, NJ with his wife Lily, their two kids and the dog Spock.

Music Sounds Better With You

by Ed Maguire

Want to improve your memory? Sleep better? Improve your visual and verbal skills? Improve your mood and reduce depression? Exercise better and have more energy? What if you could gain these benefits at no cost to you? Music is the answer – the benefits come from listening, and particularly from learning to sing or play and instrument.  There’s a reason why we use music in rituals – in religious ceremonies, chanting and mediation. Athletes use music to get themselves pumped up (look at Michael Phelps’ pre-race rituals for example).  

The benefits of music are multi-faceted, and there’s a growing body of scientific evidence exploring the how listening and playing music benefit mind and body.  I’ve been a musician most of my life, growing up in a household full of music. I picked up violin and piano from the time I was 7 years old, and the skills and experiences from listening and playing – both for fun and professionally.  There’s nothing quite like the high one experiences when playing music – it’s a sensation of getting “in the zone” – a state of heightened awareness, where you feel like you’re floating. 

It's great for your mood. Neuroscientists have found that listening to music improves positive emotions through stimulating hits of dopamine to the reward centers of our brain, making listeners feel good or elated. Listening to music impacts almost every brain center, suggesting there are widespread unexplored effects and potential uses for music.

Music helps with language learning. A 2013 study of adults learning a foreign language (Hungarian) found evidence that singing can facilitate short-term phrase learning in an unfamiliar language. Sixty adult participants were assigned to one of three “listen-and-repeat” conditions: speaking, rhythmic speaking, or singing. Participants in the singing group showed the best recall on a collection of Hungarian language tests after a 15-min learning 

Music can preserve your brain power. A recent study found that in people over the age of 65, 4 or 5 months of playing a musical instrument for an hour a week resulted in changes in parts of the brain that control hearing, memory and the part that controls the hands. The effects are long-lasting too: adults aged 65-80  performed better on tests of word recall, nonverbal memory, and cognitive flexibility the more years they had spent playing an instrument.

There’s growing evidence that music helps with memory.  In a 2008 experiment, stroke patients in rehab were assigned to listen to music, audiobooks or nothing in addition to regular care.  Based on follow-up testing on mood, quality of life and several cognitive measures a week, 3 months and 6 months post stroke, those in the music group improved significantly more on verbal memory and focused attention than those in the other groups, and they were less depressed and confused.

Musical training improves verbal skills in kids. A 2008 study found that children who received at least three years of instrumental music training outperformed counterparts on two outcomes closely related to music (auditory discrimination abilities and fine motor skills) and on two outcomes distantly related to music (vocabulary and nonverbal reasoning skills).

Music is good for the heart.  Studies of adult choir singers singing the same piece of music found they synced breathing and heart rates which produced a group-wide calming effect. A 2015 study of heart patients in India found that listening to calm music benefited the patients in multiple ways. The study found that music-listening produces significant decreases in the blood pressure and heart rate of coronary patients, music-listening reduces stress, anxiety, and depression, enhances life satisfaction, optimism, and hope, and makes life more meaningful in both coronary patients and healthy controls. Notably, the benefits -  decrease in blood pressure and heart rate were more intense in coronary patients than healthy controls.

Music helps to control pain. There are a number of studies that show the beneficial impact of listening to music for patients dealing with chronic pain. A 2013 study of 60 patient diagnosed with fibromyalgia — a disease characterized by severe musculoskeletal pain found that patients were randomly assigned to listen to music once a day over a four-week period experienced significant pain reduction and fewer depressive symptoms. A recent study of patients undergoing spine surgery found that patients that listened to music before and after surgery experienced less pain than those that didn’t. 

Music can improve the immune system.  An intriguing development from a Wilkes University research study found that music affects levels of IgA, which is a ley antibody for the immune system to defend against disease. The study measured undergraduate students’ salivary IgA levels measured before and after 30 minutes of exposure to either listening to a tone click, radio broadcast, soothing music or silence. The students exposed to music had significantly greater increases in IgA than any of the others.

Music is great for exercise. Why do you think aerobics and Zumba classes blast up-tempo music. Listening to fast paced music can help improve your performance when you are running or biking, especially if you listen to “pump-up” music to improve your motivation beforehand.  Listening to music also can increase endurance in a demanding workout.  This works through distraction – when concentrating on favorite music, it's easy to run an extra mile without realizing it.  

Lastly, listening to calm music can help the body recover faster by enhancing a relaxation effect post workout.

A key point is that it really doesn’t matter what style you want to listen to – whatever genre works for you is good. Certain styles like classical music, have been proven effective to enhance learning or for relaxation, but any style that connects with you can create benefits. If you really want to get maximum benefits, pick up that instrument you played in school and give it a whirl. If you’re a beginner don’t be intimidated.  You can get a starter guitar for around $100 and start taking lessons off YouTube. It’s the process of learning music as a new language that spurs new connections in your brain and fires up your pleasure centers.

Ed Maguire has worked as an equity analyst covering the technology sector since 1999 for a variety of firms including CLSA Americas, Merrill Lynch and CIBC. Previously he led sales for independent music distributor Twinbrook Music while working as professional musician performing on bass, violin and keyboards, composing, arranging and producing a variety of styles of music. Ed holds a B.A. in Music from Columbia and an M.B.A. from Rutgers in Finance and Management Information Systems. He lives in Millburn, NJ with his wife Lily, their two kids and the dog Spock.

NEVER STOP LEARNING

by Ed Maguire

Summer is winding down, schools are back in session and the world is changing faster than ever. Learning something new is one of the best things you can do for yourself, but for many of us, it’s not so easy to learn something new if you’re not already working toward a degree. The good news is that there has never been so much free information online and available to anyone with an internet connection. If you’re tired of the same old same old exhausted from listening to people argue about the elections, or just curious about what’s going on out there, there’s a whole load of ways that you can “go to school” without going into massive debt. Why don’t you check out a few of these resources?

Here are a few websites that I find to be great resources to expand your mind (and pick up a
recommendation or two):

TED Talks
By now, almost everyone has heard of the TED Talks – “Ideas Worth Spreading” – but it’s a good reminder that there are hundreds of amazing presentations available for free.  There’s everything from art to sports to culture, humor, music, performance art, and inspirational stories. There are new talks being added all the time. Do yourself a favor and see what’s been added recently.

Open Culture
This is a massive motherlode of free cultural and educational resources. Want to learn a new language? Take an online course? Download a free e-book? Watch a free online movie? Open Culture offers an enormous archive of content, and you’ll want to check the blog regularly for interesting tidbits, links and stories. 

Brain Pickings
Maria Popova curates this website that cobbles together thoughtful and surprising tidbits across art, music, science, literature and other disciplines.  The newsletter is a must read, and is supported by contributions.

Coursera
Want to take free classes from any one of 140+ colleges and universities? Here’s your opportunity to learn a new computer programming
language, or catch up on that Music history class you wished you could take in college.  No one takes attendance, so it’s up to you to finish the homework though.

If you are interested in getting smart on some of the most dramatic changes in technology, society and business, there are a few books that will give you a good overview of what’s happening – and you don’t need to be a scientist or an engineer to understand what’s important. Here are a few that I have recommended to people:

Augmented: Life in the Smart Lane by Brett King, with Alex Lightman, JP Rangaswami and Andy Lark (2016)

Author, CEO and futurist Brett King outlines how a new “augmented age” is emerging, powered by four key disruptive trends: artificial intelligence, embedded technology experiences, genome technology and smart infrastructure.  The book is rich with examples and anecdotes, bringing to life complex technol- ogies and concepts in an accessible fashion.   One of the best books I’ve read looking at how the convergence of AI, robotics, ubiquitous computing and digitized health will lead to epochal changes in work, life and the nature of businesses.

Abundance: The Future is Better than You Think by Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler (2013)

Peter Diamandis is a co-founder of Singularity University, and serial and concurrent entrepreneur who lays out a boatload of reasons why you should be an optimist. Advances in healthcare, science, space travel and connectivity are unleashing amazing changes in front of us.

The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologiesby Eric Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee (2014)

This is a must read for anyone that wants to get a better understanding of what technology is doing to our society.  Follow up to 2011’s Race Against the Machine, this volume is the most thoroughly researched and well written exploration of the impact of technology on work and prosperity. The book takes an optimistic tone, but does not gloss over the challenges ahead in education and technological unemployment.

The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology by Ray Kurzweil(2005)

Ray Kurzweil is a genius inventor and entrepreneur who is currently working at Google.  The idea of the Technological Singularity is that humans will be able to extend lives indefinitely as technology advances.  This is not just “Nerd Rapture” – the book lays out the basis for a lot of thinking about accelerating change. This work is a fundamental read for anyone who wants an understanding of exponential change, and it’s a core work that puts human progress in perspective.  Yes it might sound crazy at first but it’s backed up by a lot of research.

Tomorrowland: Our Journey from Science Fiction to Science Fact – Steven Kotler (2015)

This book has nothing to do with the movie of the same name.  Steven Kotler, author of “The Rise of Superman” and co-founder of the Flow

Genome Project, chronicles some of the most dramatic advances in science and technology.
Topics include private space flight, asteroid mining, bionic limbs, space diving, mind uploading, genetically engineered insects, ecological engineering, psychedelic drugs, stem cells, s steroidsand religion.  The book tracks the latest innovations In emerging fields and weaves engaging anecdotes and backstories into an accessible collection of topics.

The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces that Will Shape Our Future by Kevin Kelly (2016)

Kevin Kelly is one of the most profound philosophers on technology of our era. He was a co-founder of Wired magazine, and his books have been deeply influential to innovators and investors - must-reads for anyone with an interest in how the future may unfold around us. With Out of Control he drew parallels between nature and technology, and What Technology Wants connected the evolutionary threads from the creation of life to the rise of human civilization, and to technology as our organic extension. In The Inevitable, Kelly frames 12 conceptual forces almost as fundamental elements : “Becoming”, “Sharing”, “Cognifying”, “Flowing”, “Screening”, “Accessing” etc.  This is a book you are going to want to read and re-read to fully absorb.

Ed Maguire has worked as an equity analyst covering the technology sector since 1999 for a variety of firms including CLSA Americas, Merrill Lynch and CIBC. Previously he led sales for independent music distributor Twinbrook Music while working as professional musician performing on bass, violin and keyboards, composing, arranging and producing a variety of styles of music. Ed holds a B.A. in Music from Columbia and an M.B.A. from Rutgers in Finance and Management Information Systems. He lives in Millburn, NJ with his wife Lily, their two kids and the dog Spock.

ROBOTS

Are robots going to take away all of our jobs? Some, but not as much as you might think!

by Ed Maguire

Will humans be irrelevant in the future? What kind of jobs in the future will survive? How can we make sure that we don’t make career choices that end up like buggy-whip makers, or switchboard operators? What will we do if there is no work left for most people to do?

There’s a lot of conversation these days about what could happen to jobs with the pace of advances in robotics and artificial intelligence. When people think of robots doing work, the first thing that comes to mind is often a loveable robot from popular culture like C3PO in Star Wars, or Data in Star Trek. Or maybe on the dark side, a malevolent super computer like the HAL9000 in 2001: A Space Odyssey? In reality, robots are far more likely to look like something you’d find on an assembly line. The automation that replaces jobs is apt to look a lot more like the EZ-Pass tag for your car, or the self-checkout line at the store.

The truth is that automation has been replacing jobs for hundreds of years, making people
uncomfortable and scared for their future. If you go back to the early 1800s, a weaver named Ned Ludd smashed knitting frames (new technology) and gave rise to a movement of weavers opposed to automation known as Luddites. The proportion of the US workforce employed in agriculture declined from 41% in 1900 to 2% in 2000 due to automation. We've seen big declines in other jobs. Automobiles reduced the number of blacksmiths and stable hands; machines have replaced many jobs in construction and manufacturing. In the past, the workers seemed to be able to retrain skills as new types of professions arose. 

The concern today is whether the accelerating pace of change brought about by exponential growth in computing power, advances in Artificial Intelligence and the integration with automation and robotics will destroy jobs faster than workers can adjust. Some recent studies seem to give reason for concern: a 2013 paper entitled “The Future of Employment: How Susceptible Are Jobs to Computerisation?” by Dr. Michael A. Osborne from Oxford University’s Department of Engineering Science and Dr. Carl Benedikt Frey of the Oxford Martin School, estimated that 47% of jobs in the US are “at risk” of being automated in the next 20 years. They found that jobs in transportation, logistics, office and administrative support are at “high risk” of automation with other occupations within the service industry also highly susceptible. Larry Summers, the former American treasury secretary, looked at employment trends among American men between 25 and 54. Only one in 20 was not working In the 1960s, but according to his forecast this could reach one in seven within 10 years. In his view, technical change is increasingly taking the form of “capital that effectively substitutes for labor.” Other prominent economists including Nouriel Roubini and Paul Krugman have publicly expressed concerns that successes in technology are eliminating jobs. Robert Reich has said that robots will “take away good jobs that are already dwindling. They will in short supplant the middle class.”

The topic of technological unemployment has been discussed at great length in books like Martin Ford’s “Rise of the Robots” and Terry Kaplan’s “Humans Need Not Apply.” In Ford’s view, the writing is on the wall: we are already seeing so much technology-driven unemployment that ultimately society will have to provide a Universal Basic Income, or UBI, to every member of society to account for the declining cost of producing goods and the shortage of jobs for everyday workers. This idea is gaining a lot of ground, with a considerable amount of discussion at the 2016 World Economic Forum.

Not everyone believes in the doom and gloom forecasts. A new study by Melanie Arntz, Terry Gregory and Ulrich Zierahn for the OECD argues that studies on robots or computerization destruction of jobs, vastly overestimate the risks. They believe disruption is much less than feared, “finding that on average, across the 21 OECD countries, 9% of jobs rather than 47%, as proposed by Frey and Osborne face a high automatibility.” The McKinsey Global Institute sees job “redefinition” instead of unemployment, foreseeing that very few occupations will be automated in their entirety in the near or medium term. Rather, certain activities will be automated, business processes will transformed, and jobs redefined. Authors Andrew McAfee and Erik Brynjolfssen in “The Second Machine Age” see that disruption is inevitable in the short term, but remain optimistic that society will adjust.

So how do you make sure that robots don’t take YOUR job? The first question to ask is whether what you do all day can be easily automated by a machine. Working as a cashier or customer service person can be replaced by self-service kiosks or online (we’ve certainly seen a lot of shopping mall jobs go away because of e-commerce). If it’s a task that’s repetitive, or can be replaced in part by software processes or an online app, it’s likely the job will look different in a decade’s time. Of course, there are some jobs that could change dramatically – like taxi drivers or truck drivers with the adoption of self-driving technologies. Others are not likely to see much change at all – gardeners, nurse practitioners, therapists- jobs where there needs to be a human touch.

I like to think that robots and computers don’t have a sense of style, or good taste, or empathy, and that can never be replaced by a machine. What are those human qualities? Creativity, the ability to inspire others, the ability to organize groups of people are examples, though there are many more. Being a designer, storyteller, or an artist can never be replaced by a machine. What are those human qualities? Creativity, the ability to inspire others, the ability to organize groups of people are examples, though there are many more. Being a designer, storyteller, or an artist can never be automated, and we as human beings crave contact and social connections. While it does help to have your Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) chops, never underestimate the value of an English or Art History education (I’m not talking about a degree, that’s another conversation entirely). Embrace what’s best about being human, and  let the machines handle the rest!

Ed Maguire has worked as an equity analyst covering the technology sector since 1999 for a variety of firms including CLSA Americas, Merrill Lynch and CIBC. Previously he led sales for independent music distributor Twinbrook Music while working as a professional musician performing on bass, violin and keyboards, composing, arranging and producing a variety of styles of music. Ed holds a B.A. in Music from Columbia and an M.B.A. from Rutgers in Finance and Management Information Systems. He lives in Millburn, NJ with his wife Lily, their two kids and the dog Spock.
 

YOU TOO CAN BE AN ORIGINAL

by Ed Maguire

Do you believe that some people are just born creative, and others just aren’t? That there are some people that are born to lead and the rest of us are destined to follow? Is there some rare quality that makes some people have an impact, while others can’t? A new book by Adam Grant, The Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World blows the lid of these assumptions. Yes, you can be creative in ways you never thought, you can even change the world – you just have to have faith in your own ideas and be willing to learn the right way to bring them to success.

Adam Grant is a professor of business at the University of Pennsylvania, who’s known for being accessible and really people smart. A friend of mine gave me his prior book Give and Take: Why Helping Others Drives Our Success as a gift (appropriately). The premise of the book is that success is not just a matter of hard work, talent and luck, it’s increasingly about interactions with other people. He looks at people along three types – Givers, Takers and Matchers. He looked at how different types of people became successful in life and in their careers. Takers are those that that often get the most credit for accomplishments, building on the contributions of others that may not get recognized. Takers tend to be more calculating about the returns they get for their efforts. Givers often donate their time and resources without expecting specific payback. In some circumstances, this doesn’t always work to their benefit. Matchers tend to network between the two types. What Grant found was that Givers often see indirect payoffs over the longer term because of the goodwill and trust they build up over time.Adam Grant’s analysis is inspiring, because he lays out how you can do well by doing good. There is a method to the madness.

In Originals, Adam Grant makes an important point – that you should not be overly concerned with following conventional wisdom if you have an idea you feel passionately about. He uses an example that hit painfully close to home: Warby Parker, the successful eyewear startup named as the most innovative company in the world in 2015 by Fast Company. He was approached by the co-founders of Warby Parker in 2009 to be an early investor in the company – and he passed on the opportunity. It was the worst financial decision he ever made, so he decided to understand what went wrong.

The co-founders of Warby Parker found their idea by asking why eyeglasses had to be so expensive? They did some research and found an industry that was 80% dominated by one company – Luxxotica – that charged high prices because they had so little competition. None of the founders had a background in eyewear, or fashion, or e-commerce – but they started up the company because they saw they realized there was another way to do things. They were all students at the time, and they worked on the idea in their spare time while working at internships. To Grant, they seemed unwilling to take the big risks typically associated with startup founders – quitting to go all in with guns blazing. This was enough to convince him not to invest. But what he found later, after doing more research, was that many successful startup founders hedge their bets and proceed cautiously – because what they are actually doing is reducing risk!

One of the key insights from Originals is that experts – and related experience are not always the best source of original ideas. The most innovative ideas often come from people with skills and experience from different areas. He tells the story of Rick Ludwin, a television executive who had experience in variety shows and specials and his unlikely experience creating new kind of sitcom. Ludwin had experience writing jokes and selling them to Bob Hope, but he had never written a sitcom or developed one. He pushed an unconventional idea through, hiring writers who had not worked in sitcoms before and his project ended up being the most successful comedy of all time: Seinfeld.

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It does help to be get familiar with failure - the more ideas you try out, you’ll have a better chance of success. Composers like Beethoven and painters like Picasso owed their success in large part to the fact that they were prolific enough that even a small proportion if their output were masterpieces.

But don’t feel bad if you don’t wake up every day and attack your deadlines. Timing is important, and procrastination can also be an invaluable technique when you’re trying to collect your ideas. Coretta Scott King tells the story about Martin Luther King’s “I have a Dream” speech. King worked on it the whole night before without sleeping a wink and he knew it was going to be important. After months of preparation and a written speech – what happened? During the address, the singer Mahalia Jackson shouted from behind him “Tell em about the dream Martin” – and he pushed aside his notes and launched into his vision for the future. In front of all those people and cameras – he winged it.

What Adam Grant has found is that there is not one road to happiness or success, and there are as often exceptions as rules to conventional wisdom. Early movers don’t always win, and you don’t have to take the biggest risks. There are a plenty of ways you can hack your own creativity, and sometimes the best
opportunities come from what looks like failure. You can be a pioneer – or you can be a settler. You can be a young genius – or an old master. You can be a lone wolf – or you can be a social animal and still succeed. The key is to always think twice about whatever you do – and it never hurts to get a second opinion.

There are a few things that anyone can do to stimulate their own creativity:

1) Have a hobby. A study of Nobel Prize winning scientists by a team of 15 University of Michigan researchers found that winners were 2X more likely than average scientists to play a musical instrument; 7X greater than average to be involved in arts or crafts; 12X more likely to be a writer and 22X more likely to be a performer.

2) Get your peers involved in evaluating your ideas. The best ideas can be vetted and improved by soliciting feedback and ideas from peers.

3) Immerse yourself in a new culture: Living overseas for a while can change your perspective and give you new touchstones for creative ideas.

So the conclusion here is that you should never be too hard on yourself if you don’t think you’re cut out to be creative or for success. There’s always a path, and each person’s path looks different. To be an Original is not as difficult as it sounds – after all there are over 7 billion of us on the world, and no two will ever be alike. Embrace it.

Ed Maguire has worked as an equity analyst covering the technology sector since 1999 for a variety of firms including CLSA Americas, Merrill Lynch and CIBC. Previously he led sales for independent music distributor Twinbrook Music while working as professional musician performing on bass, violin and keyboards, composing, arranging and producing a variety of styles of music. Ed holds a B.A. in Music from Columbia and an M.B.A. from Rutgers in Finance and Management Information Systems. He lives in Millburn, NJ with his wife Lily, their two kids and the dog Spock.
 

Read more from the May Issue

CLEAN DISRUPTION

by Ed Maguire

Climate change is a topic on everyone’s mind – President Obama calls it the greatest existential threat of our time and the Paris Climate Change Conference in November 2015 attracted thousands of politicians and policymakers. What if I told you the solution is right in front of us? That all of the good intentions of governments worldwide won’t make a difference? That the problems are on the way to being solved, and all we have to do is let technology run its course? 

It may sound crazy at first, but the problems of Co2 emissions is on the way to solving itself. We are on the cusp of massive changes in energy and transportation that are happening right before our eyes, and it’s going to happen just like the personal computer industry – everything gets faster, cheaper and more powerful over time. For all of these changes, what’s driving it is not positive environmental impact. Rather the economics of solar and electric cars become so compelling it will not make sense to do it any other way. 

Would you believe that within a few years all new cars sold will be electric? Not because they are cool, or because of tax credits, but because you will be able to get better performance, reliability and value and they will be far cheaper than a traditional gasoline-powered car. How would you like to do away with heating and cooking bills? Within 5 years, you will be able to buy a house with rooftop solar panels and batteries installed that store enough power to meet most or all of your energy needs – for a total cost of about $1.20 per day added to your mortgage? Anyone born in 2016 may never need to learn how to drive! 

How could this be? One of my good friends is Tony Seba, who wrote “Clean Disruption of Energy and Transportation: How Silicon Valley Will Make Oil, Nuclear, Natural Gas, Coal, Electric Utilities and Conventional Cars Obsolete by 2030.” This fantastic book lays out in detail how declining costs and advances in solar, batteries, electric vehicles and self-driving cars together will revolutionize how we live. Tony predicts that by 2030, 

– All new energy will be provided by solar or wind.

– All new mass-market vehicles will be electric.

– All of these vehicles will be autonomous (self-driving) or semi-autonomous.

– The car market will shrink by 80%.

– Gasoline will be obsolete. Nuclear is already obsolete. Natural Gas and Coal will be obsolete.

– Up to 80% of highways will not be needed.

– Up to 80% of parking spaces will not be needed.

– The concept of individual car ownership will be obsolete.

– The Car Insurance industry will be disrupted. The taxi industry will be obsolete.

Think about the smartphone you have in your pocket. It’s pretty amazing to think that the latest iPhone has millions of times the computing power used to send Apollo astronauts to the moon. The iPhone 6’s clock is 32,600 times faster than the best Apollo era computers and can perform instructions 120 million times faster. Plus it fits in your pocket for a few hundred dollars. That’s the power of exponential technologies – and solar is benefiting from the same dynamics. 

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PHOTOGRAPHY COURTESY | Solar Power Satellite

A few years ago solar panels were clunky, expensive and not very efficient. Just like that ancient Macintosh computer stored in the garage. Over the past few years the cost of solar has dropped at an incredible rate – partly through improvements in technology and manufacturing and partly because when you make more (especially in China) it gets cheaper over time. In fact solar technology costs have fallen by 90% since 2008! World solar generating capacity is growing at 42% every year, doubling every 2.5 years. 

Every other source of energy - oil, coal, nuclear and natural gas - has increased in price by 6 to 16 times since 1970. The output per dollar for solar panels (the amount of electricity generated per dollar of cost) has improved over 3000 times compared to oil, 2600 times relative to nuclear and nearly 3000 times relative to natural gas – and it’s getting cheaper every year. You see where this is going? 

What’s the tipping point? It’s when the cost of solar power gets cheaper for the utilities – this is called “grid parity” and we are getting really close. In many parts of the U.S. the cost of solar for residential customers is the same as it costs to buy power from the utility. Within a few years it will be cheaper for utilities to buy solar power wholesale compared to other sources. 

Energy storage is the next step. We need batteries to store power when the sun isn’t shining or to buy power when it’s cheap and use it when it’s more costly. Lithium Ion battery costs are declining by 16% per year - and will get cheaper when the Tesla GigaFactory in Nevada comes online in 2020 capable of producing batteries for 500,000 cars per year. When you buy a new home, by 2020 it will cost an average of $6,000 to have enough battery storage to power your home for 48 hours. If you just add that to the mortgage with the cost of solar panels, the financing cost will be just $1.20 a day on average – and no more electric bills! 

Electric cars are coming too. Tesla’s Model 3 was announced with a $35,000 starting price for 2017 shipment and range over 200 miles. 40% of the cost of the electric vehicle is the batteries, which are declining 16% per year. By 2030 you should be able to buy Tesla Model S performance for $15-20,000. But since electric cars are basically iPads on wheels, you might buy a car from Apple, or Xiaomi in China, or FoxConn (who assembles the iPhones). 

All of these cars will have self-driving capabilities. People will still choose to drive because they enjoy it, and traditional cars aren’t going away anytime soon, but we will have the choice to drive or be driven automatically. Already companies like Uber, Google, Tesla and Apple are leading the charge (and the traditional automakers are adapting) so that there will be fleets of self-driving cars that people can share – use them when you need, and pay for only what you use. 

Get ready for changes to come fast. It took only 13 years for the gasoline powered automobile to completely replace horses between 1913 and 1926. We’ve got changes of similar scope ahead – and we will all be living in a cleaner, smarter world. 

Ed Maguire has worked as an equity analyst covering the technology sector since 1999 for a variety of firms including CLSA Americas, Merrill Lynch and CIBC. Previously he led sales for independent music distributor Twinbrook Music while working as professional musician performing on bass, violin and keyboards, composing, arranging and producing a variety of styles of music. Ed holds a B.A. in Music from Columbia and an M.B.A. from Rutgers in Finance and Management Information Systems. He lives in Millburn, NJ with his wife Lily, their two kids and the dog Spock.
 

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