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krasin

There's evidence for the opposite:

* clean energy: http://blog.samaltman.com/energy plus Tesla / Solar City

* clean water: https://angel.co/water-purification

* peace: (not sure what would fit here)

* livable cities: self-driving cars, Uber

* energy saving: Nest and similar smart home efforts

* waste reduction: very diverse topic; Project Ara is one of the efforts to reduce the consumer electronics waste

* climate protection: affordable sattelite imagery (Planet Labs, Skybox), and clean energy efforts (see above)

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Solar City is one of several companies doing a leasing program for rooftop solar, that's hardly innovation. Worse, there doing rooftop solar which is far worse than grid connected solar which is worse than wind. Still, there likely making money and it sounds good.

Tesla is also something of a tossup, right now there cars are terrible for the environment, but that might change long term.

Nest is something of an odd duck. There worse than several other thermostats when it comes to saving energy, but adoption has been really poor in this area so it's probably a small net win.

I don't really see the benefit to Uber as they increase traffic relative to hailing a cab. There might be a net benefit to surge pricing though.

In the end Startups tend to be poor places to do real environmental impact simply because most issues are really large scale. Bumping a coal power plants efficiency by 1/10 a percent has a massive impact which is hard to reach on the small scale.

Communication needs added to that list. It's as important as any one of those. We just got to watch nations provide frequent updates to the public about the Greek negotiations via Twitter. Silicon Valley has created a vast number of technologies around communication over the decades.

peace: Google Translate, Skype, Facetime, Street View, YouTube

I'd add google maps to that. Been wandering around Tokyo and Japan for a while on vacation and I've never once felt like I didn't know where I was going. Google Translate is also pretty good for translating text on signs through that photo functionality (sometimes the english is a bit rough, but still totally usable). Met a software dev last night at dinner who spoke little English (I speak pretty much zero Japanese aside from basic travel phrases) and we sat there with our phones out and had a great conversation about everything from baseball to work to family. That kind of connection would have been much more difficult without it.

Hell, call me crazy but maybe we could even add Snapchat to that. The "Live" stories where I can see snap videos from cities around the world is pretty cool.

When was the last time two English-speaking countries went to war with each other?

When you can talk to "the enemy" without a language barrier, or watch their creativity on YouTube, or go for a virtual walk down their streets, it's a lot harder to support killing them.

And when something like Google Maps enables my mobility like it does in a place I'm totally unfamiliar with, it's a lot more difficult to be guarded or reserved when traveling, because I'm not stressed about getting around, and I can enjoy the place more and meet people, which is sort of the point right?

Arab speaking countries/regions often go to war with one another (witness current and recent conflicts in Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, etc).

Also, peace means more than just "not going to war".

For example, when video cameras got so small and cheap and power-conserving that they could be stuffed into every cellphone and worn by police officers, it kicked off a transformation of race relations and the topic of deadly police force in the United States. I think this particular change is only beginning to pick up steam, and will be a major force for domestic peace in the years ahead.

Self-driving cars are the solution to nothing. We need much less cars and much more efficient transport in the cities.

if you look at the list, it just shows how much more REAL progress is needed. Most on that list is fake progress.

Transportation network companies have immediate origin and destination data for so many users that they will be able to create far more efficient "public" transportation systems than have ever existed. UberPool and Lyft Line are baby steps in that direction.

> Self-driving cars are the solution to nothing.

For better or worse, they are the solution to the continued employment of drivers of various kinds.

Here's one problem self-driving cars can help with:

http://www.iihs.org/iihs/topics/t/general-statistics/fatalit...

More people traveling by public transit, or reducing the distance between work and home (commute distance) would too.

Self driving car share / taxis means less cars & more efficient transport in the cities

Self-driving vehicles enable smaller higher-frequency buses in less-dense areas.

And auto-taxis for the .50cent/mile cost of a personal car cut the Gordian knot of parking politics that often prevents new dense development in urban neighborhoods, since people don't need to own their own cars to take economical car trips occasionally.

And they shift the economics of vehicle ownership, so fewer people own cars, and thus fewer people identify as 'drivers' that are only concerned with roadway widening and parking construction, rather than public transit provision.

And, if nothing else, they'll make a big dent in the 30,000 people killed by automobiles every year.

> Self-driving cars are the solution to nothing.

Humans should not be operating cars or any other heavy machinery for that matter. Accidents caused by human error in cars are very prevalent, and self-driving cars at a macro-level would eliminate big risk factors for death and severe injury for a great number of people. Even if we don't get fully self-driving cars and just partially self-driving cars, it goes a long way towards reducing risk. So yes, REAL progress has and is being made.

I would also add, that over time hyper efficient public transit systems and large fleets of self driving cars doing transportation as a service converge into the same thing. They are virtually indistinguishable from each other. Combine that with the progress we are making with electric cars and we've got some REAL progress on multiple fronts that will make a serious difference to the lives of everyday people.

Self driving cars are the solution to a lot of things if your physical condition (age, other health issues) prevents you from driving in our car-centered culture.

As our population ages, this will be an ever greater problem. Loss of mobility has economic consequences beyond the specific people it happens to.

More efficient city transport - you have my vote. But there's a growing population cohort for which self-driving cars may be really helpful.

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