Sundar Pichai: observation

Transcript context

…A telephone? There was a five-year waiting list, and we got a rotary telephone. But it dramatically changed our lives. People would come to our house to make calls to their loved ones. I would have to go all the way to the hospital to get blood test records, and it would take two hours to go and they would say, “Sorry, it’s not ready. Come back the next day.”, two hours to come back. And that became a five-minute thing. So as a kid, this light bulb went in my head, this power of technology to change people’s lives. We had no running water. It was a massive drought, so they would get water in these trucks, maybe eight buckets per household. So me and my brother, sometimes my mom, we would wait in line, get that and bring it back home. Many years later, we had running water and we had a water heater, and you could get hot water to take a shower. For me, everything was discreet like that. So, I’ve always had this thing, first-hand feeling of how technology can dramatically change your life, and the opportunity it brings. That was a subliminal takeaway for me throughout growing up. I actually observed it and felt it. We had to convince my dad for a long time to get a VCR. Do you know what a VCR is? Yes.…

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