Jadi apa yang harus dikuasai agar kita tidak mampus 50 tahun lagi?

Kamu kan pinter, jadi apa dong jawabannya?

Saya orangnya banyak nanya. Saya suka banget nanya.

Saya suka sama orang, seringkali bukan karena jawabannya bagus, tapi karena pertanyaannya.

You can not amaze me with a great answers. I am only fascinated with great questions.

Questions are everything. Kadang pertanyaan lebih baik dibiarkan mengambang, tidak perlu dijawab langsung, biarkan saja hidup agar pikiran ini terus bergerak mencari jawaban.

Jangan beri saya pernyataan yang terbatas dan tertutup. Ah, kita semua bisa cari jawaban dari Google, ah muak lah capek mayoritas sudah diajarin untuk fokus mencari jawaban yang tepat. Sebuah insentif aneh yang disodorkan dari sistem pendidikan bobrok dari kita kecil, ah selama belasan tahun!

I have several ideas that I want to tell to myself.  About something that stroked me in the past months about the future of everything, interestingly I previously had thought and discussed about the underlying concept of that thing so long time ago, long before I got into the university.

*

What’s it all about?

The future trends.

Dulu ga tau mau masuk kampus mana. Cuma kepikir UI karena Mama emang sarjana S1 disana struggle luar biasa sambil hamil abang gua waktu kuliah, and terus lanjut dapet beasiswa S2 UI and lanjut jadi dosen hingga hari ini karirnya naik terus.

Trus gua baca-baca buku. Banyak buku. Gua banyak abisin waktu di perpustakaan SMA 70, well ya ga semua buku itu bagus, and yeah you know haahhaa. Discuss with many people. Inspired a lot with the entrepreneurship things.

Hingga gua dapet kesempatan mampir ke kampus gajah duduk, thank GOD ada acara outing dari gereja hkbp main ke bandung dan mampir ke ITB..

I felt like wow. My heart’s pounding when I was there. I knew that Soekarno was from this place, TP Rahmat, Ciputra, Subianto, and the latest tycoon at that time, Bakrie, was also from ITB. Dang, so simple: I wanted to be world leader and or entrepreneur and those big boys were coming from this campus!

One of the ITB alumni was going with us also and I had a lot of discussion with him. Oh my GOD, I honestly forget this old man’s name. But I am still remember that I was so passionate to get into ITB and he promised me Rp 500,000 if I could got into it. Eventually I got the ITB, yet I didn’t get the cash. Dear readers, please don’t give out promises easily…

**

Here the story.

 

Ah yeah, this is the thing that I want to emphasize, the discussion with the old man (O) and me (M)..

O: “So what’s your goal?”

M: “I want to study in this campus. This is the best campus in Indonesia, as far as I know.” (then i mentioned some famous ITB alumni names)

O: “Oh great! I also got my degree from here. Good to know it. What major do you want to take? You could make big money if you have the Petroleum/Mining degree” (he mentioned some of his relatives working on those fields making big money..)

M: “Hahahahha, yeah making big money is interesting. But I have a different thinking. I think all of those natural resources will be replaced sometimes and somehow. It is just a matter of time ” (well I dont believe that i could have spoken those words, note that i was taking the mining engineering instead LOL)

O: “Interesting.. So you’re not interested with the lucrative pay?”

M: “Yeah, of course I am! Hahaaa. But, it will not exist for the long run. I plan to get into the Information Technology (IT) major. There’s where the future belong. Natural resources is so yesterday. Today is the time for the technology.” (I dont believe what i said back then..)

***

In a nutshell, I was planning to get into ITB taking IT major.

Realization: I went to ITB with mining engineering major. Not bad.

 

Not bad?

Not really..

It is really happening, natural resources is down, oil price down and I think won’t recover any soon and if it recovers it won’t be that awesome. It happens also with coal. I dont want to share much with the reasoning, you can google it. That’s not the whole point of this writing, dont let me digress.

So, I have been thinking about technology in the past months. Thinking so much. I am annoyed with the AI improvements. OH MY GOD. That’s too fast. O GOD.

FYI, Currently I am working as an equity analyst. A job that I believe could be replaced easily by those robots.

The industry itself is prone to crisis and yet to have another huge boom (my view, let me know yours) and then we will have a disruptive technology for the financial market and esp the capital market coming in. In short, my job and my expertise right now is prone to be obsolete.

Looking at the freaking fast movement of the technology transitions and looking back at my previous ambition to have education on IT, I was simply thinking to go back to the tech industry. BOOM!

** **

One of the rationale why I worked in capital market is that this is a legal way for common people to make a lot of money. From my own research, capital market/investment business was the only way that the middle class people can climb to the conglomerates leves in the shortest time period.

Example from Indonesia: Sandiaga Uno and Hery Tano. Other entrepreneurs took a lot of times while the others made money helped by their rich parents. It was somehow true until last decade.

Yet, we can not use the very similar strategy to handle different problems. Technology becomes the super growth source for the young people and that’s the thing I will discuss..

Capital market is great. Stock market is awesome. I can’t disagree with that. But, I also realize the greater power in this market that I could not beat: the insider trading, the market maker, and some stock gurus.

Combined with irrational retail (and also so-called smart institutional) investors. Coupled with my limitation: limited time, limited energy, limited self-control, and limited capital. God, I need miracle to make trillions out of this with my current condition.

More than just making money (hate me or love me, i like having a lot of money), I want to make an impact. (Cliche, i know) and I want ride the wave of the trends.

If you want to change a current. You have to stay with the current until you are big enough to change the lane or to enforce change of the current.

The most expensive currency here is the time. You need time to go BIG and to do something with that.

Besides time, we may have other tools to help us. But again, the main currency here is time. The tools would work as a leverage that could help us to do things more effectively in more efficient manner. Yet, remember, it is all about the time that matters.

Oh yeah, Praise GOD for everything..

*** **

I just deleted some words unrelated with the key points. Thoughts wandering around the corner, looking for the quickest way to hit the pleasure button. That’s our brain.

Anyway, here’s my thoughts about what’s going on and what would happen..

Google will rule the world. Google currently knows you more than your mom or your girlfriend: your email (they never delete your email), your text, your contacts, your location, your incognito, your voice, your past, your hidden past, and even can predict your next move, and many more. Next: Google wants to rule your mind.

Losing more conventional jobs and conventional business. Legal job (JP morgan has invented lawyers for its legal), robot doctors, forget about the customer service, white collar is gone, dangerous job with high paying jobs is gone, physical retail stores gone, robot financial advisers and investors (that’s my field being taken), and many more. Then more freelance jobs available, with more specialized job, compete with robots..

Natural energy is done. We won’t run out of oil, thanks to technology and those greedy man digging more oil. Coal is the cheapest until the economic of scale of renewable and the storing medium for electricity hit the market so soon. Just a matter of time, look those big oil giants put their money on renewable, look also those techies..

Transport like never before. Ride-sharing, then driver-less ride-sharing, flying car ride-sharing, anything ride-sharing (anythings means helicopter to camel), deep-water and mars transportation..

Blockchain is there taking the global currencies and some others tradables around the globe.

The death of the advanced countries and the rise of the emerging. Growth is still there, but we human, just don’t like the idea of “slowing-down of growth”. Our greediness will be strong incentives for manipulative acts, more aggressive decision, risky business, higher default, fake data, more wars, and boom. Then blame the terrorist, the uneducated, the broken, the aging generation, the majority.

Everything to change much more, faster.

*** ***

It is one thing to be grateful and a whole different thing to change the things as we expect to happen. I am grateful and thankful for my current job. It is not the end, this is not as I want ideally, it is stepping stone of becoming and being the person that I want to be.

So, following the question that i asked by myself, not trying to close the answer as the question is more important than the answer itself:

I want to be that powerful entrepreneur (as I defined), coming out with technology.

That’s my short and temporary answer.

 

What’s yours?

Cheers

[SHS-6May’17]