Salim Ismail: We Are Already Gods, We Might As Well Start Acting As Such

During my time at Singularity University I was privileged to get a 30 min interview with Salim Ismail for Singularity 1 on 1. During our conversation we discuss issues such as: Salim’s personal background and early childhood in India; his motivation, goals and aspirations for Singularity University; the term “exponential organisation”; his take on the technological singularity and the surprising fact that he is not a singularitarian; being/becoming gods; our responsibility for what happens to the planet; religion in general and the rapture of the nerds criticism in particular; making money and investing; being Canadian; using technology to address humanity’s grand challenges. I would like to thank Singularity University for allowing me to use their campus during filming. Hope you enjoy watching the interview as much as I enjoyed talking to Salim! Who is Salim Ismail? Salim Ismail is a sought-after speaker, strategist and entrepreneur based in Silicon Valley. He travels extensively addressing topics including breakthrough technologies and their impact on a variety of industries. Salim spent the last three years building Singularity University as its founding Executive Director and current Global Ambassador. SU is based at NASA Ames and is training a new generation of leaders to manage exponentially growing technologies. Before that he built and ran Brickhouse, Yahoo’s internal incubator. His last company, Angstro, was sold to Google in August 2010. He has founded or operated seven early-stage companies including PubSub Concepts, which laid some of the foundation for the real-time web. Salim also serves on the board of Breakthrough, a global human rights organization.