“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”
Thirty years ago, my dad spent long nights watching Star Trek marathons, mesmerized by the teleportation and video-messaging magic the 1960s sci-fi series was known for. Perhaps it was this relentless fascination with technology that led him to betray the physics lab and leap into the seductive arms of Silicon Valley, the Oz I was fated to call home.
Here, I grew up watching the rise of tech giants and developed my own tenacious confidence in the power of technology. Today, video-messaging is not science fiction but a speck compared to the perimeters of innovation – a solar cell that diminishes both the carbon footprint and utility bill of an American household, or a rural Internet kiosk that provides market prices to Brazilian fisherman by day and disease diagnoses by night.
If technology can be an enabler for good, I want to be an enabler for technology.
Praveen's hopeful, tenacious words in a dusty classroom in an underprivileged Mumbai neighborhood will never escape me.
"I have a mobile so I can do it."
That day, I recalled my foolhardy delight the moment a boxy green-screen Nokia 3310 was placed in MY hand for the first time – a cell phone enabled my preteen freedom, and allowed Praveen to efficiently juggle English classes, two jobs, and four children; my social independence and his social mobility, both empowered by a single wild and precious device.
I will empower technology and enable remarkable products of innovation to better reach and teach people, from the Valley to Mumbai and everywhere in between.
— Smriti Jayaraman