Dilemma: A new wave of industry or TV on my iPhone?

Another bay area CIGS-based solar start-up company got $79m in funding recently. The near future looks quite interesting in the Bay Area with companies like Nanosolar, Miasole, Solyndra & Solaicx (not CIGS based) among others compete to carve out their piece of the new emerging industry.

While it is great to see small start-ups emerge in the field with the help of venture capitalists, it would be great to see increased investment and subsidy from the government to catalyze the growth of The New Alternative Energy Industry (not just solar). It wouldn't be so bad after all to see large-scale engineering & manufacturing jobs re-emerging in the United States.

Read the article on Solyndra on CNET.

Dotcoms and Financial Services are great for some, but doesn't help much with opportunities for the majority of the population - the shrinking middle class and poor.

A new wave of industry collaboration between the public and the private sector is what I'd like to see. I love Technology and it would be gratifying to watch it applied to a broader scope benefiting the entire society (their is a lot of opportunity here) and reach beyond serving primarily the prodigal lifestyle of the MTV Generation and the Yuppie Dilettante. Again, technology advances in consumer products have been great in recent years, but we might want to put our TV shows on our "Camera-PDA-MP3-Video-YouTube Enabled-Mad Ringtone-Widescreen" fancy phones on pause for a bit and look at a bigger picture.

There is a lot of opportunity for advances in societal application of new technologies out there.

First Impressions from Bogota

A dear friend of mine is in Bogota, Colombia for the summer as part of her graduate program. She posted a brief glimpse into her first days here.