Technology

My dad was fortunate to get a high school education, and to build a small fortune with an abacus as his primary tool. In 1970 I enrolled in CU’s Engineering School, armed with the very slide rule technology that was used by NASA to calculate the trajectory of the rocket that landed a man on the moon. 

Shortly thereafter, during my sophomore year, Intel launched the 4004 microprocessor, which was literally a computer carved onto silicon, with a processing speed of 92,000 calculations per second. I remember buying my HP35 calculator for $395, staying up all night to learn how to use it, and feeling empowered to be on the cutting edge of technology.

Fast forward 50 years, and my new Apple computer with the M1 Max processor has 57 billion transistors, and is capable of doing 10.4 trillion floating-point operations a second -- a billion-fold increase in computing power!

Regardless of what business we are in, and how we made our money, it is evident that the majority of the wealth created in the past half century was based on advancement in technology, starting with that Intel 4004 chip. Having missed most of that wealth creation, I ask myself what is today’s equivalent technology to power future growth, and what role might Highland Institute play in supporting such an advancement in the next 50 years?

As I can barely figure out how my iPhone and Apple watch talk to each other, I have to rely on Dustin’s generation to keep current with the latest technology, including Decentralized Finance, Blockchain, Crypto Currencies, Quantum Computing, Artificial Intelligence, Crisper, Nanotechnology, and more.

From my father to my son; from the abacus to quantum computing; from gold to Bitcoin, our world is changing fast. Join us on this exciting journey as we communally try our very best to understand the future world in which we will live.

— Sina.