10 Myths about India (International edition): Call centers are very important to India's growth

When the topic of India gets brought up in chatting with my colleagues (and students) or friends (especially the long drawn discussions at the dog park), I frequently start off with "No, in reality, it is not like that.." So I thought I should put some of my points in one place (not in any particular order) to decrease entropy generation:

Myth #2: Call centers are very important to India's growth: Not really!. Out of India's $ 76 billion information technology (IT) industry, services such as call centers, tech support and medical transcription constitute a small fraction of the revenue. India has a healthy and growing IT industry that offers high quality software and consulting services on par with the best in the world. Call centers, on the other hand, account for about 1% of GDP and about 0.1% of the workforce, and since this sector does not involve a high degree of technical skill (I am appreciative of good communication skills) competition from other low cost markets (such as the Philippines) is growing. The state of the IT industry, overall, is better because it is not just dependent on low cost services.  The IT industry has changed some business approaches and social practices and has been very beneficial, but it still measures only up to 7% of  GDP and only recently have some companies started to focus on creating original, innovative products rather than rely on services. In comparison, the engineering industry (including mining and assorted stuff) contributes about 20-25% of the GDP (by some measures) and though traditional industries aren't as "world class" as IT services, specific sectors like automotives are getting there in patches.

10 Myths about India (International edition) : The education system in India should be really good

When the topic of India gets brought up in chatting with my colleagues (and students) or friends (especially the long drawn discussions at the dog park), I frequently start off with "No, in reality, it is not like that.." So I thought I should put some of my points in one place (not in any particular order) to decrease entropy generation:

Myth #1: The education system in India should be really good : You're very likely to hear this in the US and outside of the Indian elite, probably only in the US. My take on this myth might be good enough even for the Indian edition. While literacy rates in India have increased at an appreciable rate (from 12% when the British left us to about 76% currently and I am indeed proud of this), serious issues remain. The definition of basic literacy is downright depressing. A good fraction of primary and secondary schools are run by just one teacher (simultaneously teaching many classes while being absent half the time) and despite all the efforts, only 16% of students reach high school and only 8% graduate. This is absymally low for a rapidly growing economy with an acute shortage of skilled labor. It is true, however, that the fortunate few millions that end up in good private schools receive better training in mathematics and science than the average high school student in the US. So we have that going for us.

About 6% (of the total college age population) reach college and on average, the quality of education and employability of graduates continues to be very poor, and by all measures, is declining by the day. Adam Smith (in my book, a top 10 human being of all time) once said "…if an equal proportion of people were educated at the public expence, the competition would soon be so great, as to sink very much their pecuniary reward.” While this problem could be true in advanced economies (present day Britain, especially), this is not at all India's concern. In India, the issue is that with growth in the higher education sector, quality has taken a hit beyond imagination. Take the example of the southern state of Tamil Nadu - This is one of the most progressive and prosperous states in India (I would rate them in the Top 3 by both measures), engineering colleges have mushroomed in the last 10 years.  About 20 years ago, one in 80 aspirants could get into engineering colleges.. and these days about 20% (50000) of seats remain vacant. With the explosion in opportunities has arisen a tremendous shortfall in lecturers (quality and quantity wise) and while there are some very good teachers around, a good majority (not all, bless those souls) of lecturer posts get taken up by fresh college graduates and many of them do so because they can't find other decent options. Some reports that I have read suggest that companies think that less than one in 10 engineering graduates are "employable". Access to education is one of the most important aspects of a growing economy and while the increase in quantity has done short term good, the alarming decline in quality doesn't bode well for the future.

Secondary education is about quantity and Higher education is about quality. At the present moment, India is well behind the curve in both aspects. Changes can't and won't happen overnight, but I think things will get worse before getting better.

All this said, at the very top (IITs), the quality of education is still very good (but declining according to various sources) and comparable to the Ivy leagues and Oxbridge (in technical rigor, but much less well rounded). However, less than 1 in 200 aspirants make it to the original 6 IITs) and just the cream in many other universities is comparable. Every year, more than 100,000 Indians leave for higher education to the US (an equal number to the rest of the world) and a majority of these folks rely more on hard work, survival instincts and adaptability than background knowledge to make it to solid jobs, all the way to the top of the middle class. In fact, the average household income of Indians in the US is the highest among any group and is twice that of the US average. Of course, at the highest end of this spectrum, the best of the best Indians have made amazing contributions in founding big corporations and produced significant achievements in science and engineering.

In summary, the Indian education system has always faced incredible challenges (even at the present moment, only at par with the likes of Pakistan and Bangladesh on average) and is exhibiting growing pains. You probably have to be aware of the fact that it is indeed the top 5% of the crop that comes to the US. To boot, a majority of this group is successful not because of what they learnt in the class room, but rather off of it. I am, however, confident that with the growing awareness of India's acute problems and increasing pressure on the government to perform, things will improve in a few years.

A day in the life of a stupid NRI

"It is my goddamn right to be in this bus and you damn better not ask me to get off it !!!" I was about to scream at the top of my lungs.

How did it come to this? Less than 30 minutes ago I was speeding home in an ultra-modern chauffeured SUV and with the air conditioning in full blast, one that was giving us less than 11 miles to the gallon... and now I am about to trade blows with the conductor of a crowded bus,  a ticket of which costs Rs. 9 (17 cents) for a 23 km journey.

It all started yesterday when my cousin sent another such vehicle to pick me up from home (I accepted the offer as I needed to clear my mind) to be dropped off at his remote retreat in a jungle about a 4 hour drive away. At 33, he is quite the self made man and having started off from scratch after college, he now runs three different businesses and recently started two more to fund his own racing team. I spent the afternoon and evening at an even more remote location with some of his interesting friends; the type who make a trip to London to receive a photography prize at the Natural History Museum in the dead week between two car races. Having grown up in the upper middle (which in India means the top 1-2%) class in Coimbatore, this is the India I am familiar with, especially in my stints home the past decade. Entrepreneurship in Coimbatore - the small city with big money - is perhaps more ingrained than in Silicon Valley (although you could substitute the word 'innovation' with 'imitation', 'high tech' with 'manufacturing' and 'billion dollar ideas' with 'million dollar banality') and enterprising people abound. Things have been so good lately (for the fortunate 5%, about a third of whom depend on money pumped from their progeny in the United States) that real estate and apartment prices are now much higher than in Bangalore. If I were to buy an suitable apartment in a good residential location, I am looking at shelling out upwards of $175,000 (not including about $25000 worth of furnishing) in a city where the median annual income of a middle class family is probably less than $5000 (when adjusted for a PPP factor of 3, this doesn't look too bad, but it also takes apartment prices to Silicon Valley levels). I read, think and theorize a good deal about the plight of the common Indian and while (I think) I have a reasonable understanding of the general difficulties, I must say that I have probably never experienced the daily grind and with the skyrocketing inequality, I have been wanting to do something about it.

This morning, after a short walk in the forest, I was ready to get back home and my cousin was insistent that I should be chauffeured home again. On the way home, however, I convinced the driver that I should be dropped off three fourths of the way and that I would find the rest of my way home using public transport, and that too of the cheapest variety. So I got off at the bus terminus in some place X and needed to get to place Y to catch a connecting bus home. I was about to wander off in search of the ticket counter when the driver told me that there was no such thing as a ticket booth and that I was supposed to buy my ticket on the bus. So I got on a bus that was on it's way from X to Z via Y as per the sign on the side of the bus.  Z was about 45 km and Y was roughly half way.

 I got on it, fit myself into a seat that has a leg room of about one third of that in the local flights (or one half of that in Southwest Airlines) I had taken a few weeks ago. To enrich the experience, I even got myself a Rs. 5 portion of hot Sundal (fried masala chickpeas for the uninitiated) wrapped in a cone shaped piece of newspaper, served off an open bucket. When I was about to gleefully consume it, the bus conductor started shouting "If you're just planning to go to Y, you better get off the bus. Preference is for those traveling to Z". Some people started complaining and the conductor was like "Preference is for Z, all those planning to get off at Y better get the heck out". More protests, more of the same. Shit got real when the conductor asked me where I was going and (somewhat more politely) told me that it would be a good idea to get off. I was kinda confused and was unsure whether this was because the bus wasn't planning to stop in Y or whether he was screwing the good few Y people who were comfortably seated because the Z people were more lucrative customers. I got off with a bevy of frustrated folks getting their displeasure heard more amongst themselves rather than to the conductor albeit in a non belligerent manner. 

So I stood on the pavement and was trying to figure this deal out over my surprisingly delicious Sundal. I did confirm with one of the victims that the conductor did indeed screw us over and before I returned after a failed sojourn to find a trash can (this might be about as bad as locating one in Blighty, but I was not going to litter the place like many of my fellow countrymen or the Neds in Glasgee for that matter), the bus took off. I did find a few of the victims sticking around, but not all.

I carefully wrapped the almost empty sundal packet, stuffed it into my pocket and started to think BIG. BIG, as in the kind of ideas mainly NRIs are capable of. I would take off my Roger Federer hat, ruffle my hair, hide the $1300 worth of electronics deep into my backpack and act mean. If the conductor in the next bus does the same thing, I would stand my ground and yell at him along the lines of

"What do you think you're doing? It is clearly written on the side of the bus that this bus will stop in Y and I know for sure it will stop in Y. I got to my seat a full 10 minutes before the other guys did. It is my goddamn right to be on this bus and you better damn well not ask me to get off it. If you still insist, I want your name and am going to take action. If you want to remove me, you have to do so physically.. not just me but all the other Y people" at which point, there would be more people who join the cause and a minor battle would be won for the common people.

Sure enough, the next bus rolled in and I watched the conductor go  'Only people to Z... Only people to Z... Y people better not get in' for about five minutes. I got in nevertheless and was rehearsing my tirade and made sure I stood right next to the conductor. The bus was getting quite incredibly crowded and the conductor stopped yelling the pleasantries and bus took off a few minutes thereafter. I was the first to buy a ticket and when I said 'One ticket to Y', he gave me a ticket and was rather indifferent about it. The next 7 or 8 takers were all Y people and the rest were pretty much Z folks. Then I got it - He just made sure the longer haul people were seated and didn't care two hoots about what happened after that.

So what did I learn from all this? a) That injustice can come at you in many forms, b) That most people don't complain when screwed, c) You  really can't predict how you might be treated - Your experiences will be slightly different every time unlike in the developed or upper middle class world, d) Be ready to take a stand the next time lest that opportunity slip, e) You just wasted a bunch of your time reading this blog, and most importantly, f) To never shove even an almost fully finished Sundal pack in your pocket - I thought I was pretty careful, but by the time my journey was half complete, my pocket was a mush.

So as the 52 seat bus (crammed with 70 people) took off, it made an unspecified stop; about 10 people got off and 10 got in... admist the crowd, the conductor was skillfully navigating his way and getting tickets to his new clientele; some people made way for an OLD lady and someone offered his seat (gasp); a couple of standing (possibly Y) folks were entertaining a (possibly Z) baby seated on her mother's lap and was probably uncomfortable with the crowd while her mother was quite seriously reading a 'how to speak Hindi clearly' book; someone (possibly one of the victims from the previous incident) started a conversation with me in broken English about the welfare policies of the government and its impact on the local economy; a group of young kids were rhythmically tapping the ceiling to the beats of a catchy song blaring from the speakers of the bus; It all seemed to come together for everyone in bus and life just chugged along. 

Just another day in the ebb and flow of life in this country. Change will come when it comes. Humanity gets by, collaborating when necessary, berating when not, but always with the bottom line in mind.  Not unlike the few missed heart beats that I initially experienced on the "hair pin bends" on the way down from the hills. Sure, one in a million is going to die, but the rest of us just get by juuust fine.

ps: Yes.. you guessed it, the last paragraph was just a (poor) attempt at getting at least a blog post out of the non-event.... and yes, the entire post is supposed to radiate the NRI naivete.

America the average and all that...

There appears to be no shortage of people (within the country and elsewhere) expressing their opinions on "America's decline". Quite undeniably, over the last few decades, the "gap" between the US and the rest of the world has narrowed and in fact, some small European countries have a better standard of living on average and the US, like every other country on earth, faces major challenges. But that doesn't mean one has to put up with all the drivel that is shoved down the collective throats of the public (through the internets and otherwise). Most people who want to get heard go to the extremes.. quoting selective numbers and most importantly, taking partial derivatives - i.e. projecting the future while assuming everything else is fixed (or at best, linearly extrapolated). What is perhaps most frustrating is that when some national problems are highlighted, it is seldom done in the global context. The next time you hear about NASA's budget "woes", be mindful of the fact that if anything, the spending is not going down on a year-to-year basis and it is still 3x of ESA's, 12x of China's and 7x of Japan's (granted, things are accounted differently elsewhere and PPP matters, but still).  When comparisons are indeed made and intricate details of America's problems are discussed, typically not enough appreciation is shown of the problems that other countries face. You just can't operate in isolation in a globalized world. Also, just focusing on GDP growth numbers of say, some emerging nations and assuming that things will continue the way they are just doesn't cut it.

As an example, consider the status of manufacturing: Contrary to what the average Joe may infer from all the talk, the US is still No.1 in manufacturing output and outstrips China by 30% (alright, let's not get into the nitty gritty of the accounting). Granted, Chinese manufacturing has more than doubled in the last 10 years while the growth in the US has been modest (while jobs may indeed have been lost, productivity is up and US manufacturing output actually increased by half a trillion dollars the past decade! if you believe some reports), but it is still stupid to ignore  numbers and the "we don't make anything here anymore" argument is plain dumb. Especially when you are No. 1 and No. 2 is experiencing a steep rise in worker wages and discontent and then there is the matter of logistics and rising transportation costs (see, I can take partial derivatives too). Besides, it looks like US manufacturing is making a comeback of sorts recently (this might or might not last, but then I am allowed to linearly extrapolate, right?). This obviously doesn't mean China won't overtake the US in manufacturing (they definitely will), but it is idiotic to downplay 18% of global manufacturing output from 5% of it's citizens in a highly globalized world.

So what do I think about the decline and all that? Let's start with areas where I think the US will have clear advantages in the foreseeable future.

1. Innovation: Without any doubt, the US has the best environment for high impact innovation, fueled by some of the best companies, universities and research labs in the world.  The role of the federal government in funding research at all levels is still very good. The next time you hear about "not enough research funding" , you should consider it in relation to numbers in the rest of the world, just like NASA's funding, even in face of "but.. but... as a % of GDP..."

2. Universities: America has the best universities in the world whichever way you look at them and while there are excellent universities around the world, nothing outside of a 100 mile radius of London comes close to matching the overall excellence of US universities. Ranking universities is far from a scientific way of judging them (every ranking methodology has unfair components and doesn't translate well across cultures), but one can't ignore every single list which tends to be overwhelmingly dominated by American universities, what with every one of the top 5 engineering schools in the world being local as well. The story is more or less similar in the life and physical sciences and this continues to hold even if you give the rest of the world an advantage by not factoring in the amazing breadth of activities that American universities offer. Compared to anywhere else in the world, these universities are very diverse, continue to attract top level talent from everywhere and many of them have paved a path towards sustainability by accumulating endowments that run into the billions of $. No less than 65 universities have endowments of more than a billion dollars and many top schools like Harvard, Yale and Stanford have made tuition free for families earning less than $100K/year.

3.  Unbounded opportunities "for all": Elon Musk, the SpaceX/Tesla CEO said he moved to the US because "It is where great things are possible". While that sounds a bit cheesy, I'd like to see if any other country would trust a commercial company to provide access to space. This is the wrong blog to speculate whether this is a great idea (I am just pointing to the existence of the opportunity), but quite amazingly, fellow billionaires like Jeff Bezos, Paul Allen and Richard Branson (honorary American FTW) are getting into the act as well at various levels. I think that if you are ambitious and/or talented and/or hardworking, there are no limits to growth, regardless of who you are or where you are from. You might find exceptions, but relatively speaking, this is as good as it gets. While you can also point out amazing stories of achievement and success anywhere in the world, nowhere else is it more prevalent or "easier" or more ingrained in culture or is a daring idea better accepted. If you're an immigrant (especially from the developing world), you don't even need to read this section - the (relative) absence of a glass ceiling compared to that in other countries is striking. Enough has been written about Silicon valley, but more impressive is the opportunities for millions in more mundane professions (not to mention university professors whose labs resemble corporations).

4. Stability: The word on the street is about how America has changed in the last 10 years or since the 70s. While it is true in some sense, it is absolutely dwarfed by changes the rest of the world has seen - Late 80s Europe anyone? Creation of the Euro? Yearly changes in Asia?. The predictability brought about by stability, abundant natural resources,  the world's reserve currency and great American institutions (no I am not just talking about tailgating in college football) has enormous implications. So what happened after the S&P downgrade of the US government's credit rating? Foreigners just keep buying more US treasury bonds. I am not saying that the government won't be in big trouble - I am merely saying that the tendency of the media (and others) to make a meal out of all kinds of stuff needs to be filtered.

5. Energy and resources: No other country (other than it's cold war rival and northern neighbor perhaps) has more energy resources and while reliance on foreign oil is not a completely trivial issue, the alternatives at hand are more than sufficient to overcome any foreseeable challenge. While there is obviously a need for a coherent energy policy (and more public awareness), America's energy problems aren't that serious compared to almost everyone else. Almost the same situation for other natural resources. Big emerging economies are in much much bigger trouble as are many advanced economies in this regard.

So do all these positives trump the rise of the rest and such? No and Yes - the complete answer lies in stratification. I am going to throw some numbers around that are open to the scrutiny of +/-  percentage points, but are otherwise solid (I am so sure of them just like the hackjobs on TV). I think that the top 15% (by income) of Americans live more comfortably than the top 15% in other significant countries, aided by access to a great (for the most part) educational system, healthcare and materialistic needs. I don't see this changing at least for one more generation because of some of things I mentioned before - Enormous intellectual capital and institutions exist, companies will continue to innovate, the best universities will get better, more high-skilled jobs will be created, etc.  Even in times of anemic economic growth, things just keep getting better for this sector of the population. I do think that even if most of the middle class gets left out, American innovation will produce things that people will buy - at home and abroad. This is not to say that the government won't be in a lot of trouble and make things difficult for this section of the population. Debt is around 100% of GDP (not too unusual for many emerging and advanced economies) and unless some kind of health care reform is made, costs will spiral. But again, more than half the government debt resides within American shores.

For the bottom 30%, the picture looks troublesome. With the declining quality of the public school system (I don't believe that international math/reading scores mean much because of preparation. note:  Shanghai, China is at the top, but that, by itself represents < 1% of China) but still, the average public school is not doing well despite relatively generous spending, cost of higher education (while there exist excellent opportunities and financial aid for high achievers, the *average* student from a low income family will struggle) access to health care (no need to say anything here), social mobility of the poor is now worse than that in Europe. This is incredible because Europe has always been seen as "stale" and America as "dynamic". This is just a statement that on *average* it has gotten harder to move up the ladder - the occasional rags to riches story is no worse here than elsewhere. I have a hard time believing that things won't get worse for this sector of the population as public funds are being stretched. A radical change in thinking has to come about in terms of how Americans think about equality.

That leaves out the rest of the middle class - much of which still has access to good opportunities (but with less of a safety net, not necessarily better compared to the rest of the developed world) and a relatively safe and predictable society, but things won't be as straightforward as they once were. This sector will be most affected by globalization and the catching up - The innovation that the "Top 15%" create won't necessarily help as jobs with a lower degree of specialization could be outsourced to cheaper places or at least perfomed more efficiently in other countries. The key then, would be to improve access to quality education so that this sector can compete better. I know that it is not a zero sum game, but for the average American to compete with say, the top 20% of Indians and Chinese means dealing with half a billion "hungry" and capable people.

I think that for the foreseeable future, America will be the best place for highly talented/skilled people from all over the world. Let me loosely say that if you are a citizen of the rest of the world and have decent higher education (in science or engineering, preferably) and you're looked at as possessing middling levels of talent and motivation, your best bet is still the US because of the relative ease of getting a solid job, good prospects for growth and livelihood. If you are near the highest end of the spectrum i.e., incredibly talented or perhaps possessed like Elon Musk, again, the US is the place to be.  For people in other parts of the spectrum, America is still a great option, but not perhaps necessarily as compelling as before. Many emerging and advanced countries have definitely filled this void, and comparable opportunities do exist, perhaps not in proportionately large numbers.

On a more solemn note, however, if it is business as usual, stratification will continue unabated and more and more of the American middle class will find the going harder and the AVERAGE quality of life won't be better than the rest of the developed world. Given there isn't much of a safety net (in terms of health and other government benefits) and there might never be, taking advantage of the uniqueness of the land of opportunity lies in improved access to opportunities.

It is not the 60's anymoooore*. On average, America is becoming average, and while there do exist great opportunities for mobility from the middle class to the upper middle class and beyond, sadly the same can't be said about moving into the middle class. For a good section of the population, being in the greatest country in the world doesn't mean a whole lot. For things to change, the two most important (by a country mile) are :

      - Access to good education

      - Containing spiraling health care costs

This will help the average American to be competitive and the government from going broke. Obvious, but hey..

* Said to the tune of that hard ass general in Avatar

ps: A good friend of mine usually tells me that there are two kinds of people in the world: those who group people and those who don't. I hate grouping people (and some stuff in this post sounds snobbish), but I find that it is otherwise difficult to make an argument. Perhaps I can find better ways of doing this and rely less on blogetic license in making sweeping statements if I didn't write it in one shot.

pps: I am obviously not suggesting that it is a great idea for YOU to pack up and leave to/from the US. I am talking about generic situations.

Cost of Green energy?

Being quite curious about what Sarah Palin had to say at the India today conclave, I came across this nugget from her speech : "A recent British study shows that for every 'green job' created, nearly four jobs were lost elsewhere in the economy due to lack of affordable energy!". Now, especially given the person who said it, it is quite easy to ridicule the statement, but I looked it up. Quite clearly, Palin oversimplified the argument (and messed it up), but the actual study did conclude that the costs associated with higher energy prices and government subsidies outstripped job creation by a factor of 3.7. So they were looking at it purely from a jobs/economic perspective, and in the near-term (and not the impact on the environment). This is not just in isolation.. studies in Holland, Germany and Spain have also indicated similar (though not as drastic) results and it has prompted some governments to cut back on subsidies.

These kinds of studies are always open to severe criticism. It is not even easy to nail down a number for the cost of wind energy. Direct generation costs (cost per unit of energy generated by a wind turbine) are easier to estimate, but if you consider the plethora of subsidies and tax-breaks, it gets a lot more muddled (there is also this small matter of effectively distributing it to the customer). If I have to pick a number, I'd say perhaps 6c/kW-hr (not including subsidies), which at least about 30-40% more than conventional sources like coal and natural gas. The good news is that wind energy used to cost many times more about 25 years ago, but the bad news is that the rate of cost reduction has tapered off in recent years.

Now, if wind energy were completely reliable and we had a good transmission/distribution model and the quantitative effects of man made carbon emissions on the atmosphere can be determined  and we had a better idea of when we would run out of oil, then paying the extra 30-40% would be pretty easy.  Fact is, there is no guarantee that ANY of these issues will be resolved in the near future, so it will just boil down to cold numbers: Cost of wind energy has to go down (along with the % of subsidies) by quite a bit. With the discovery of all kinds of shale gas and assorted resources, in my opinion, fossil fuels will be too useful to ignore because they will continue to be cheap in the near future.  With new developments in Fischer-Tropsch techniques (coal to gas and gas to liquid conversion), alternative energy will find the going a bit difficult unless the hammer comes down on pollution (good luck with that in the near future). Incorporating Carbon capture technologies in fossil fuel based plants will increase costs considerably. Till then we will hear more and more Palin-type rumblings and they won't be completely unjustified.

ps: If you are thinking about bias, please consider the fact that part of my research is on wind turbines.

Monitoring energy use... in great detail

This post was spurred by a couple of nice developments - one at home and one at work.

First, while paying my electricity bill on-line, I noticed a link to "usage statistics". I clicked on it and found that I could monitor my energy usage monthly/weekly/daily and even by the hour. This is how a sample day looked like:

I think that it is super-cool. About as important a development as any and as I said on Facebook, this is truly deserving of the smart prefix.  Nothing helps a cause more than affixing good hard numbers to stuff ($ values are even better). That said, we gotta go easy on using my HDTV and microwave.

I work with some kids in the computer science department and the last time I went for a meeting there, I noticed cell phone sized devices attached to each power-outlet and the computers and other paraphernalia were connected to these. It appears that some student is running this thing using which you can monitor how your energy gets used - in a way that is way more detailed than my home usage. Take a look at this awesomeness:

powernet.stanford.edu is where its at - If you set up an account with them, you can monitor every power-outlet you use and break it down in great detail. True to form, the nerds (sorry guys) that I work with even had a powernet device monitoring the energy usage of another powernet device.

I was thinking about breaking down the energy usage in my laptop and that got me going on how incredible it would be if we were able to do this on our cars - I'd be interested in knowing how much energy I lose in applying brakes, stepping on the gas for no reason, air conditioning, idling, etc. I'd pay to be able to graph it. Think Prius times 10 levels of greatness.

Seriously though, there is no better innovation in energy efficiency than cutting down wastage. Monitoring energy use is the first step.

Edit: People will protest anything http://www.montereyherald.com/local/ci_17545753?nclick_check=1