Print Place Cards Using Microsoft Word Mail Merge: Fill & Download for Free

May be you would have read this before.. have a read again.. its gaining importance these days..In case you find it too long, just read the headers, even they are self explanatory!****Rule 1 is the Very Very Very Important.. ****Rule 1 – Answer swiftly Your customers’ send you email because they want quick responses. The golden rule for email is to reply within 24 hours, and preferably within the same working day. If your response email is complicated, just send an email confirming receipt and letting them know that you will get back to them. This will ease the customer's mind!Rule 2 – Use a meaningful subject line Try to use a subject that is meaningful to the recipient as well as yourself. For instance, when you send an email about a product, it is better to mention the actual name of the product, e.g. 'Product A information' than to just say 'Product information'. It also makes it easier to search for old emails when the subject line is relevant and specific to the content of the email.Rule 3 – Don’t abuse the “Reply to All” Only use Reply to All if you really need your message to be seen by each person who received the original message. Sending off irrelevant or unnecessary replies to everyone on the list is just annoying and confusing. However, if communication is vital between all parties in an email thread, use the Reply to All to keep everyone in the loop. If you only use Reply in such a case, the recipient may have to forward your email to everyone else , which is frustrating and disjointed.Rule 4 – Use the BCC Field When sending to many people, some people put all the email addresses in the To: field. There are two drawbacks to doing that: (1) the recipient knows that you have sent the same message to a large number of recipients, and (2) you are publicizing someone else's email address without their permission. Instead, consider using the Bcc: field. Put your mailing list group name in To: field in their email (leaving the To: field blank may look like spam). If you have Microsoft Outlook and Word you can do a mail merge so each recipient receives their own email, or create a mailing group in your email software if it has that utility.Rule 5 – Don’t leave out the message thread Include the original mail in your reply, in other words click 'Reply', instead of 'New Mail'. We all receive many emails and we can't remember each individual email. Leaving the thread may take a fraction longer in download time, but it saves the recipient time looking for the related emails in their inbox. Remember, emails are not like regular printed correspondence - the name of the game is to keep it quick and efficient – so include the thread!Rule 6 – Read your email before you send it Treat email like any other official company document. Read it before you send it. Spelling and grammar errors are just as unfortunate in email as anywhere else in your corporate correspondence. Look out for potential misunderstandings, the tone, and inappropriate comments; we use email because it is quick and easy but precisely that quickness may cause more trouble than you bargained for!Rule 7 – Confidential information Email is just too risky a place to include confidential information. Ask yourself if you would want the content of your email displayed on a bulletin board. Never make libelous, sexist or racially discriminating comments in emails, even as a joke. Consider implementing a Disclaimer on the bottom of all corporate emails with statements on Breach of Confidentiality, Virus Liability, etc. (Yes, you can be sued for sending an email that contains a virus!)Rule 8 – Abbreviations & emoticons Be careful using email abbreviations such as BTW (by the way) and LOL (laugh out loud) in business emails. Even today, some people still don't know what they mean, so it's better to drop them. And emoticons, such as the smiley :-) don't belong in business email unless a relaxed form of communication has long been established with the customer.Rule 9 – Don’t attach unnecessary files Wherever possible try to compress attachments and only send attachments when they are productive. Make sure you have good virus software in place to scan your outgoing emails - a customer would not be happy if you send them documents riddled with viruses!Rule 10 – Don’t forward junk Don't forward chain letters, virus hoaxes, chain email solicitations for charitable causes even if they sound bona fide, funny pictures and jokes. Would you put these things on your corporate letterhead? I don't think so. Don't ever send or forward emails containing libelous, defamatory, offensive, racist or obscene remarks. Just one offensive remark can result in a multi-million dollar court case for you and your company.Rule 11 – Be concise Do not make an email longer than it needs to be. Email is harder to read than printed communications. A long email can be very discouraging and can be abandoned before the recipient gets to your final point all the way down at the bottom. If it has to be long, consider including a synopsis at the top of the email.Rule 12 – Answer all questions & more Make sure you answer all the questions and pre-empt new questions in your reply. If you don’t answer all the questions in the original email, you’re wasting your own, your company’s and your customer’s time. Worse still, you are leaving the customer frustrated. By answering all questions and pre-empting further inquiries, you are making a great impression and reflecting thoughtful customer service. For example, a question regarding the types of credit cards you accept can be replied to with the list of cards, information on other payment methods and even a link to your website order information page!Rule 13 – Make it personal Did you know that the most effective word in marketing is “you”? Not only should the e-mail be personally addressed, it should also include personal, i.e. customized, content. For this reason auto replies are usually not very effective. When you get some questions over and over, such as directions to your office or how to subscribe to your newsletter, save these texts as response templates and paste them into your messagewhen you need them. You can save your templates in a Word document, or use pre-formatted emails.Rule 14 – Use the proper structure & layout Reading from a screen is more difficult than reading from paper so the structure and layout is very important for email messages. Make your paragraphs short and use blank lines between each paragraph. When making points, number them or separate each point with blank lines to keep the overview.Rule 15 – Don’t overuse the High Priority function We all know the story of the boy who cried wolf. If you overuse the high priority option, it will lose its function when you really need it. Besides, even if a mail has high priority, your message will come across as slightly aggressive if you flag it as 'high priority'. Likewise, be careful using the words Urgent or Important in the subject line.Rule 16 – Do not write in CAPITALS IF YOU WRITE IN CAPITALS IT SEEMS AS IF YOU ARE SHOUTING!! This can be highly annoying, difficult to read and might trigger an unwanted response in the form of a flame mail (you get yelled back at!). Therefore, try not to send email text in capitals.Rule 17 – Be careful with formatting Remember that when you use formatting in your emails, the sender might not be able to view formatting, or might see different fonts than you had intended. 10% of email recipients cannot read html or rich text email; they can only receive in plain text. So for them, fonts, colors and other fancy formatting is lost. When using colors, make sure it is easy to read on the background color you have selected. Remember, monitors vary in color presentation so what may look good on your monitor may be unreadable when displayed on another monitor.Rule 18 – Do not request delivery & read receipts This will almost always annoy your recipient before he or she has even read your message. Besides, it usually does not work anyway since the recipient could have blocked that function, or his/her software might not support it, so what is the use of using it? If you want to know whether an email was received it is better to ask the recipient to let you know that it was received.Rule 19– Do not recall a message Chances are that your message has already been read. A recall request just looks silly then. It is better to send an email saying you have made a mistake. This will look much more honest than trying to recall a message.Rule 20 – Do not copy a message or attachment without permission Do not copy a message or attachment belonging to another user without permission of the originator; you might infringe on copyright laws.Rule 21 – Avoid long sentences As mentioned earlier, email is harder to read than printed material. People don’t give email the same brain power as they do when reading for example a letter. Try to keep your sentences to no more than 15-20 words.Rule 22 – Keep your language gender neutral it is correct today to avoid sexist language such as: “The customer should bring his car to our service department for an oil change”. You can use “his/her” or keep it neutral by rephrasing the sentence: “The customer should bring the car to our service department for an oil change”.Rule 23 – Don’t reply to spam Spam may make you furious and you may want to reply with “flame mail”. Many spam emails are sent to confirm that your email address is still valid, and by replying you are only making yourself known to dubious marketers which may result in even more spam. Just delete the spam, or use anti-spam software.

Lol that’s funny, this is funnier :-PYou mean like they tried to with Canada in 1812? Only the Queen has subjects and subject nations, ya know our British Constitution and our Magna Carta . Well there’s no room in those documents for amendments for this hypothetical ideology to be brought into practice.We have the best trained troops in the world, along with allies keeping an eye on yous ie the entire commonwealth countries armies that work for the Queen and country you wouldn’t last a week in battle, do you fancy taking on the entire Indian and Australian armed forces? Because that’s the reality as well as all of Europe coming against you as the aggressor that’s also the reality.You would lose and fail spectacularly Ever seen an angry warrior? . At your own peril and on your head be it to LITERALLY take on half of the world’s countries, this is also relevant to could America invade Britain and all such ridiculous related questions NO NOT IN A MILLION YEARS are the yanks capable of this in every respect all that waste of money on military would come to fruition after obliteration of every troop and piece of equipment, the aforementioned information answers that. This makes way for South Canada the former America haha :-PYou’re already aware of our laws anyway by way of the aforementioned Magna Carta, the British Constitution and British Common Law all of which you copied for the Declaration of Treason which ironically was conceived/signed by a British subject born in British North America :-P :-)REMEMBER the UK is already a union of countries united (UK) namely England, Scotland Wales and Northern Ireland. Also to take into account are the Channel Islands Isle of Man Isle of White the Falkland Islands British Virgin Islands Gibraltar Jersey Guernsey etc. England may need to be subdivided into regions for reasonsNorth EastNorth WestLincolnshireEast MidlandsWest MidlandsSouth HumbersideYorkshireLondonSouth EastSouth WestWe would never accept nor be satisfied with the UK being a singular “State”We the Sovereign Majestic Imperial Majesty’s People wish to point out that colonies are eligible to rejoin the Empire. This is due to an alarming number of Americans writing to the Queen at Buckingham Palace asking to quote “take us back”(True). Therefore we understand that some butthurt people will be offended by that notion of Empire therefore we tactfully and strategically renamed it “The Commonwealth of Nations” or simply “The Commonwealth” for short to be inclusive of said butthurt people, that’s how nice we are eh!In an unexpected televised address HM the Queen has offered to restore British rule over the United States of America.Addressing the American people from her office in Buck House the Queen said that she was making the offer “in recognition of the desperate situation you now find yourselves in.”"This two-hundred-and-forty-year experiment in self-rule began with the best of intentions, but I think we can all agree that it didn't end well," she said.The Queen urged Americans to write in her name on Election Day, after which the transition to British rule could begin “with a minimum of bother.”Now onto Brexit. This may cause alarm to some people the thought of a takeover by the UK Parliamentary system so “Parliament would play no role in this deal initially. This would be an old-school monarchy. Just me, and then, assuming you’d rather not have Charles, we could go straight to William and those children of his who have mesmerised you so.”As with Prince Williams kids you like our Royal Family so it’s a win win you actually get to be a part of something you like.So with the full support and backing of Canada and the American people it is with immediate effect the United States of America shall forthwith be known as one of these.The Protectorate of British South CanadaorBritish South CanadaOrThe British Protectorate of North AmericaorThe British Protectorate of AmericapossiblyThe United Kingdom of America Great Britain and Northern Ireland (America is first in there before us which is another nice thing)or British (North)AmericaMost likelyThe United Kingdom of America Great Britain and Northern Ireland :-PWith immediate effect the United States Postal Service (USPS) is forthwith known as Her Majesty’s Postal Carrier “Royal Mail”Along with the absorption and rebranding of the Postal services the US Post Offices shall forthwith be known as Post Office Ltd. Post Offices are independent franchises and not Government owned much like Subway and McDonalds.Postage Stamp.Sapphire Jubilee Commemorative £5 Stamp to be used for parcels once weighed up to said value. As the name implies commemoratives are usually collected but are valid for use same with coinage. Multiple stamps of any singular denominations can also be used this way ie 1st 2nd ClassFirst Class Postage. Next day delivery2nd Class Post. Two days delivery.Currency and Coinage.The Federal Reserve Bank does not exist. Along with Fort Knox they will amalgamate with the Bank of England or BoE. Currently this is chaired for the first time in the banks history of over 300 years by a foreigner, namely a Canadian so this transition should be ok for you.Coinage Pounds and Pence GBP Great Britain Pounds or Pounds Sterling. These are so much prettier and the notes are too just ask Canada £2 coin, £1 coin, 10p, 2p, 1p, 5p, 20p, 50p. There are 100 pennies to the pound also colloquially known as “quid” if singular or “quids” for multiples of one pound,easy.Paper Currency. Like Canada the world’s oldest currency is no longer paper with the exception of the final image currency is now plastic polymer they are also different sizes, you no longer have featured any dead people on the front of your new notes it’s always the reigning Monarch.The Winston Churchill £5 Note or “Fiver” 5 quidThe £20 Note Obverse and Reverse.The Jane Austen £10 note or “Tenner” Obverse and Reverse.The Matthew Boulton and James Watts Inventors of the Industrial Revolution £50 Note£50 note | Bank of England Some perusal material about all current polymer notes and security features, dimensions etc.That Golden Eagle on your passport cover and Great American Symbol/State Seal was actually appropriated from an 18th gentleman’s magazine in London. Thus as you are already using something of ours it will not take much to get used to these:So this passport design is post Brexit with no EU reference and the wording will be adjusted accordingly likely with the aforementioned inclusion of America.And this is the State seal for HM government all paperwork and official documents etcThe Driving License. DMV no longer exists it’s now DVLA Driving and Vehicle Licensing Authority.One format consistent across the board currently for all Countries of the UK, there will no longer be unnecessary Washington or California or New York licenses all of which are phased out through a reintroduction roll out of the one format design you no longer are required to have a mug shot taken at a DMV location these no longer exist you as with passports are free to use any medium to get them taken inc home photography and printing on quality photograph paper as long as they meet the necessary requirements size dimensions and quality.Here is a Provisional Driving LicenseYou can no longer drive at ridiculous young ages. The featured card license above will be given to anyone from minimum age 16 however you cannot take Driving lessons until you’re 17 and you cannot hold the full Driving License until you are 18 but you can drive on the road at 17 with a supervising driver. They must be a full Driving License holder aged 21 or over and has held said License for a minimum of 3 years.The American healthcare for profit organisations are dissolved with immediate effect for many reasons and we care about people and put them first therefore people can now not have to worry about bankruptcy or house repossession because you now haveThe National Health Service.Your Banking system is stone aged and backwards so they’re merged with proper banks and rebranded, meet your new banking industry.We in the UK have faster and better internet access therefore meet your new ISP’sBritish Telecom is popular and you already know EE but you know this as T-Mobile T-Mobile hasn’t existed here for sometime it’s now EE.Mobile Phones exist they’re not called cellphones You will notice by the logos that mobile phone providers also offer internet you can also get good deals and offers if you take out another service with one of these companies ie broadband access you could get a good deal as an existing customer if you take out a mobile phone contract. You will be pleased about this because we’re cheaper and have better plans than what you currently have or ever had.You already know the Virgin BrandIn Conclusion a personal sentiment this will please The many American Royalists in existence, a personal message from your Monarch Her Sovereign Majestic Imperial Majesty HM the Queen EIIROne is aware that you were given supervised probation in a 250 social experiment. With assistance and intelligence from my (Her Majesty’s) British Armed Forces based in the British Army Base in Washington D.C. the British Intelligence Services based around America and finally from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police it has been brought to ones attention you have spectacularly failed in recent times to nominate and elect competent presidential candidates and members of Government thus you have proven unable to govern yourselves according to our correct standards as followed by many nations around the world we made the world a better place and only the good things that have and do happen globally can be attributed to the Great British People. It is with great regret and sadness that one is informing you thusly of the Revocation of your Independence with forthwith effect. Like Canada the preference for the Oxford English Dictionary shall continue you will no longer be required to use Webster’s Dictionary and one encourages you to look up the words of revoke and revocation. One shall resume monarchical duties over the whole of tge United States of America with Jersey and Delaware being exceptions one does not fancy this idea they are therefore new countries.A Councillor or MP for America will be appointed by your new Prime Minister removing the need for further elections.The Senate and Congress are dissolved. The British Embassy in Washington shall remain along with all British High Commissions and Consulates spread throughout the country. My British Embassy will post out notifications to the country to make people aware of this and to actually see if you noticed or were/are ignorant to this change.To facilitate the new transition into a British dependency, it’s with forthwith effect the following conditions are to be implemented1. There’s no such thing as American English it simply doesn’t exist. Microsoft have been informed so that spell checker is updated for the inclusion of the letter U and removal of IZE2. The letter U is now correctly inclusive in all words where it’s not currently used ie color now becomes colour as originally intended. THE IZE suffix is unacceptable use and is to be replaced with ISE3. Your current use of vernacular is unacceptable and you are expected to be inclusive of the concept of Correct English it is after all given to you by us the English people. Use of verbage stalling while one thinks such as uh umm like and ya know are not acceptable in any polite society or any society in general you’re expected to “Buck Up”4. 4th July is no longer celebrated this is to be replaced with 23rd June know as Brexit Day or Independence Day.5. This is extremely important and every form will be the correct format of DD-MM-YYYY OR YY. Ie 22nd June 2018 or 23/6/18 it is acceptable to omit the “20” from the beginning of the year and is fully acceptable to use 18,19 etc instead unless on specific forms such as passport applications driving license applications and any government form where the DD-MM-YYYY format is to be used.6. The Second Amendment is non negotiable we can’t carry guns around the street and neither can you, the right to bear arms is therefore repealed plus it’s outdated anyway and in no way relevant in this 21st Century.7. Resolve issues without Solicitors aka Lawyers there are still states using the correct word of Solicitor so this is already known to many of you. Resolve issues without therapy, and the aforementioned guns.5. Roundabouts now replace intersections effective immediately , and you will start driving on the correct side of the road which is the left side effective immediately.**6.The metric system effective immediately and without the benefit of conversion tables replaces the current inefficient archaic system****See comments.6. The former USA will accept British petrol aka petroleum prices Gasoline is no longer acceptable or in use which currently is 115.9p (pence per litre) £5.269 per gallon £50.90 barrel.EIIR Lolz :-P :-)

Technological unemployment is unemployment caused by advancements in technology, particularly in the area of automation and efficiency. These advancements tend to turn a product into a service.Your smartphone is a prime example of this. It is a product that you pay for, but also includes many free services, which on their own can cost just as much as the iPhone itself.This is the homepage of a brand new iPhone:This 32GB iPhone 7, and every application on its homepage, costs $649 USD. Data plans aside, for $649, this device is a:NewspaperMail CarrierTelephoneTelevisionMusic PlayerInternet BrowserCameraVideo CameraMapFlashlightClockNotepadWalletPhoto AlbumCalendarPedometerIf you add up the cost of all of these things together, you’ll find that it’s far more money than just $649. In addition to this, there is a services store known as the “App Store” which allows you to download and install as many other services as your iPhone can physically store. Many of these services are free, and those that aren’t are typically low cost. Using the App Store, I can turn my iPhone into a video game console, social network, word processor, a photo and video editing suite, and even a grocery store.You see, the ability of computers to digitize physical reality, and then portray it graphically on a full colour display, has radically democratized thousands of industries. Now, in order to compete, these industries have to either become more affordable, or evolve in such a way that makes it so that they’re not longer competing.The digital camera industry is a good example of this. Ten years ago, most people owned a digital camera that they brought to weddings, special events, and while they were travelling. There was an SD card inside, and they would use it to transfer their photos to their primary computer. However, now the camera on the iPhone is more than enough for most people, and so nobody has a reason to buy a digital camera. In order to stay in business, most camera companies have begun making high end digital cameras for professional photographers, who need something much more customizable, manual, and sharper than the camera on an iPhone. Alternatively, some of these companies have also made photo editing software that’s available to purchase on the App Store.Since there are less professional photographers in the world than there are amateur photographers, these camera companies don’t have to make as many high end cameras. Since they’re producing less products, they need less employees, and so people have been laid off. To be fair, new positions have also been created as well. Now these camera companies need more specialized engineers to design the more expensive professional cameras, and they also need programmers to make the photo editing applications on the App Store. So although advancements in technology tend to cause unemployment, they also tend to create just as much employment, just in new fields.However, sometimes there isn’t enough new jobs created to balance the loss of old jobs. The idea behind growth in the economy is that, after taxes and after you pay for your basic necessities, you have some disposable income leftover. With that income, you buy the products that these companies are making, such as digital cameras, televisions, and smartphones. The companies selling these products make a profit, and use that profit to grow their company and create new products. However, if enough people are laid off, and thus don’t have any disposable income to spend, then nobody will be able to buy these products, and the companies making them won’t be generating any profit, or any revenue at all. To save money, they’d have to start firing people too, which only adds to the pool of unemployment. So now we have a country full of people with very little disposable income, and companies that have no money to make new products with.This is known as a depression.There have been depressions before, with the most famous one in the United States being the Great Depression of the 1930′s. So far, the country has managed to pull itself out of depressions and recessions gradually with the help of new industries popping up. It’s hard to say what would have happened to the United States had the Second World War not happened, because that’s what essentially got the country out of the Great Depression. The war stimulated growth in a number of areas, but most importantly in the areas of computer science and electrical engineering, which were used to help crack encrypted German codes.Once the war was over, research into these computer systems continued, and a ton of new industries were born, mainly in the San Fransisco Bay Area, which became known as Silicon Valley. The power in the computer was its ability to quickly perform complex instructions, such as calculations. Thus, one of the first consumer products born out of the Silicon Valley boom was the electronic digital calculator, in the 1960’s:Before these came along, people were hired to perform complex calculations by hand, or with the aid of larger computer systems, for a much higher cost at a far slower speed. With personal calculators like Anita, companies were suddenly able to make complex calculations quickly on their desks, and speed up the rest of their workflow. This had a major impact in just about every industry, especially in finance, scientific research, and education.But the major breakthrough was the personal computer in the 1970’s: a reprogrammable device that could follow different sets of instructions. An early personal computer could replace a calculator, and still perform other functions, as long as you had enough knowledge of computer science and electrical engineering to pull it off. Thus, in the 1970’s, they were pretty much just hobbyist devices, used by a small group of people who truly understood how to get the most out of the machines.Then along came two brilliant men: Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs. Wozniak was an exceptional engineer who had been dreaming of owning his own computer ever since he was introduced to calculators, and Jobs was an exceptional visionary who had been experimenting with Eastern philosophy and dreamt of changing the world. The two of them were childhood friends, and after Jobs returned home from one of his meditative trips he visited Wozniak to see what he’d been building recently. Woz showed him a personal computer he was making, which would later become known as the Apple I, and Jobs was absolutely floored. He fundamentally understood the impact that a reprogrammable computer could have on society, and he focused all of his energy on bringing it to the masses.Together, the two friends founded Apple Computer, and released their first product, the Apple I:It was meant to be hooked up to a small television monitor, and would display text using green phosphors. You could use the device to perform calculations, and if you knew what you were doing, anything else that could be contained by the very small amount of memory and storage space that shipped with it, including video games. This coincided with the rise of the arcade industry, with companies like Atari reigning supreme.Next came the Apple II, which is a good representative of what personal computers looked like around the year 1980:The “killer application” here was the computer’s ability to run a word processing program, called Apple Writer. During this same period of time, Microsoft was founded by Bill Gates and Paul Allen, which focused on writing the operating system for computer hardware manufacturers that were competing with Apple, primarily IBM. Gates licensed this operating system out, known as MS-DOS.The computer revolution continued quickly. Companies and consumers were beginning to see the use of them, and began to incorporate them into their daily lives. Here’s an example of an advertisement for the Apple II from 1979, featuring a man who can be seen managing his investments:However, Steve Jobs wasn’t satisfied. He knew that personal computers couldn’t be adopted by the masses because they were just too difficult to use; the vast majority of people have absolutely no idea how to reprogram or even navigate one. Then, one day in 1979, he and his team made a trip over to Xerox PARC, the copy and scanner company’s Palo Alto Research Centre, where they were working on what could be the successor to Xerox’s current product lineup.Xerox had invented something fabulous, but the rest of the company mistakenly didn’t see the potential of it, and so PARC was stuck in research and development limbo. They agreed to let Jobs and his team see what they’d invented, in exchange for the right to buy Apple stock before it went on sale to the public. The Apple team arrived, and Xerox showed them what was, technically, the first graphical user interface, ever.Jobs was floored, and realized that this was the future of computing. He demanded to see more, and once the team was confident that they understood how it worked, they went back to Apple and began creating what would eventually become the LISA, which was the first personal computer to ever ship with a GUI, in 1983:This was followed by the much more cost effective Macintosh, which shipped in 1984 for $2495:Although it didn’t quite take the world by storm right away, mostly due to its high price, it kickstarted the age of the graphical user interface, which Microsoft then copied and turned into Windows in 1985, and things were never the same again.Jobs understood the need for an intuitive user interface, and so Apple adopted the concept of the mouse from Xerox and Douglas Engelbart, who showcased the theoretical possibility of a graphical user interface and mouse in his famous “Mother of All Demos” in 1968, and created a device who’s UI revolved around a pointing mechanism; a natural intuition of human beings. The operating system itself mimicked that of a physical “desktop”, with computer “files” being stored in “folders”. Thus, consumers were able to see what they wanted on the screen, use the mouse to point to it, click on it, and open it to view it. This radical leap forward in user interface design, in conjunction with greater advancements in computer processing power, meant that the first real applications could be written for Mac’s and PC’s. These were applications such as word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, painting, and video games.However, personal computers still didn’t really kick off until 1989, which was when the World Wide Web was invented by Tim Berners-Lee. And in the home, they weren’t popular until 1993, when the first web browser was made, called Mosaic. With the World Wide Web, the final piece in the personal computer puzzle had been solved: socialization. Human beings are social animals, and we want to be connected to one another. Using a personal computer was an interesting and empowering experience, but until 1993 it was an isolating experience. After the World Wide Web and Mosaic, computers were allowed to talk to one another, and the dot-com boom happened, with companies making retail websites and entirely new companies appearing on the scene, such as Amazon, which was the first successful online retailer, and Google, which allowed you to search for websites.By the end of the century, just over 50 years since World War II ended and exactly 70 years since the Great Depression, the United States was back on its feet and the economy was growing again. The Second World War stimulated growth in computer science and electrical engineering, which resulted in an explosion of personal electronic computer systems that could perform extremely complex tasks. Now people could store 1000 songs in their pocket, buy a product online from somebody else on the other side of the world in an instant, type up a document and print it out at home, and even take their own photographs and upload them to their computer, to view and edit whenever they wanted. The democratization of traditional industries had begun to happen, with the personal computer playing a central role. At the turn of the century in 1999, 70 years after the Great Depression, this was commonplace in most households:So, why is technological employment a problem now, when I just described how computer technology saved the United States from a lingering economic depression and brought things back up to speed?Well, it’s a problem because it never really slowed down. In fact, it just kept getting faster, and it continues to get faster today.You see, as computer systems became available to the public, companies such as Intel, which make computer processors, actually used personal computers to make faster and more powerful computer chips. So each time a better computer system came out, it was easier to, in turn, make better computer systems. This meant that rate of computer processing power and speed essentially doubled every 18–24 months, a trend known as Moore’s Law, named after the man who observed it in 1965, Gordon Moore, one of the co-founders of Intel. Remarkably, this trend has continued to this day, even as it’s become increasingly difficult to shrink chip sizes and make computer systems more powerful. Every time we seem to hit a roadblock, such as the very electrons themselves “leaking out” of the semiconductor material, there’s some breakthrough in materials science or workaround that allows us to keep going further. Why is this?It’s because, just as computer systems allowed computer chip manufacturers to make more powerful products, they also allowed other industries to perform better as well, especially those in materials science and nanotechnology. Since powerful computers can simulate physical reality, we’ve been able to actually make remarkable breakthroughs in how we actually physically assemble materials, down to the atoms themselves. Two innovations that are on the verge of having a tremendous breakthrough are graphene transistors and quantum computers, which compute on a physical level so small that they’re both insanely powerful and insanely fast, while also remaining energy efficient.And because computer systems have become so powerful, we’ve actually been able to write programs for them that are so intricate by design, that they can actually take advantage of the data we feed them and manipulate it by themselves. This is known as artificial intelligence.Commercial companies have been using artificial intelligence since as far back as the 1990s, most famously with Google’s search engine, which is essentially just one large AI. In fact, Google has built their entire platform off of collecting your data, intelligently analyzing it, and sending you personalized advertisements as a result. Their entire intention was to create a large-scale artificial intelligence from the very beginning, by first creating a search engine to feed it data. Slowly, over time, they’ve acquired businesses that are “data intensive”, which they’ve brilliantly leveraged to continue to make their artificial intelligence smarter and smarter. YouTube has been used to train the AI to discern between moving imagery, for instance.And since the introduction of the iPhone in 2007, we’ve been constantly connected to the internet through our smartphones, sending an enormous amount of data back to these companies essentially 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Which brings me back to the device that I opened this essay on, the iPhone 7, which actually ships with one more free service than I listed originally:A personal assistant.In fact, every smartphone, tablet, laptop, and desktop that ships today comes with a personal assistant. Generally, what can these assistants do? They can:Check the newsSend messagesCall peoplePlay a videoPlay a songBrowse the internetTake a pictureTake a videoGive you directionsTurn on the flashlightCheck the timeTake a noteOpen your walletFind a photoCreate an eventTell you how healthy you’ve beenThat’s right: these assistants are becoming the services.My smartphone isn’t just a camera, it’s an intelligent assistant that can open the camera for me. It’s not a calendar, it’s something that can remember an upcoming event. It’s not an internet browser, it’s someone I can ask for information from.It’s not a map, it’s a guide.It’s not a notepad, it’s a note taker.It’s not a product, it’s a service.What else constitutes as a service? Well, we have truck drivers who transport things across the country. We have cashiers who ring up our purchases. We have manufacturers who put together our products. We have teachers who pass on knowledge. And the list goes on, and on, and on…As technology pushes forward, it will become cheaper for artificial intelligence to be the one serving us, and not other human beings. Anything that can be automated, will be automated.The problem is, this time, these jobs aren’t coming back. There isn’t another “computer revolution” on the horizon to kickstart the economy again. Artificial intelligence will be a cheaper and more efficient alternative, and companies will permanently downsize because of it.And it isn’t just these jobs. Positions that we think of as having high importance, such as police officers, lawyers, and doctors are technically in “service” of us. They sift through large amounts of data, come to a regulated conclusion, and then serve us with their orders or recommendation. They, too, will be replaced to a reasonable extent.That means, this time, it may not be as easy as going back to school and getting a new job in a different kind of field. This time, nearly every field is going to be affected by artificial intelligence. Tons of people are going to lose their jobs or be paid so little that they effectively have no disposable income, which means that they won’t be able to actually pay for the products and services that these companies make, which means that companies won’t be able to generate profit or revenue and will have to shrink themselves more, by laying more people off, and the cycle goes on, and on, and on, until we reach a breaking point where the vast majority of people have no wealth whatsoever.Fortunately, this time, there’s also a catch. You see, even though artificial intelligence has taken away most people’s jobs, it’s also made those jobs vastly cheaper to do. In fact, things are so cheap, that the country is saving incredible amounts of money, especially as this has taken place alongside other revolutions in inexpensive energy (solar and nuclear) and manufacturing (nanotechnology and manufacturing at the atomic scale). Therefore, in a world where there are no jobs but tons of automated production, there’s only one thing left to do:Give back the money to the people.The money saved from this widespread automation will actually be distributed back into the public, in the form of a Universal Basic Income. At first, this won’t be a lot of money, but since the cost of living will have decreased dramatically as well, it won’t need to be a lot of money.Currently, the poverty line is around $1500 a month, or $18,000 a year. So, let’s assume that the government gives all 320 million citizens $18,000 a year. That would be 5.76 trillion dollars a year. The total GDP of the United States is currently 16.77 trillion dollars, or essentially 3 times as much as what would currently be required to keep everyone above the poverty line.But, again, since the cost of living will decrease while the total output of product, due to automation, will increase, in the future there will be a much wider gap between the GDP of the country and the amount necessary to give everyone a Universal Basic Income.So the same technology that’s going to put millions of people out of work is also going to allow us to never have to work again.After we get to this remarkable point, I’d imagine that we’d turn our attention towards three key things: nanotechnology, artificial superintelligence, and biotechnology.With nanotechnology, the focus will be on building a machine that can create anything from the ground up, atomically. Think of this as the “iPhone” of manufacturing. This one device will essentially be a 3D printer that can make anything, given the right atoms to build from. And if you could put this into everyone’s homes, like an iPhone, then everybody could simply have whatever they need, whenever they need it, including the necessities such as food and water.With superintelligence, the focus will be on building something that’s just as smart as us, and is deeply embedded into our daily lives. Instead of me operating the nanotechnology 3D printer myself, I would simply ask my superintelligent assistant for something, and it would make it in the printer and bring it to me. So if I said: “I want a hamburger”, then the machine would make me a hamburger and bring it to me, for free.And with biotechnology, the focus will be on tinkering with our biological makeup to make us live for as long as possible, while also exploring the possibility of merging with our superintelligence through the means of nanotechnology, in case the intelligence gets too smart for us and decides it doesn’t need human beings anymore. It would be best to prepare for this possibility, so that it doesn’t catch us off guard.If all goes well, then we’ll have a future of incredible abundance where you can have whatever you want, whenever you want it. We’ll live for as long as we possibly can, and society will be kept in order and mediated by a superintelligence that is, hopefully, unbiased and neutral.Beyond that, I see our species working much more collaboratively and exploring exotic possibilities such as spreading out into the solar system, interstellar travel, and manipulating space and time itself. After we become a master of this planet, we can become a master of our solar system, our galaxy, and perhaps even the universe itself.The only limit to our potential is our own imagination. So while technological unemployment may be a problem in the short term, it’s actually just another stepping stone along the path to abundance and utopia. Enjoy the present, honour the past, and remain hopeful, optimistic, and imaginative about the future, and you will be very satisfied in your life.Cherish the little things, such as this very moment in which you exist. Forgive those who’ve wronged you, and fix the mistakes that you feel must be fixed. Overcome the things that you feel are holding you back, including the limitations within your own patterns of thought, and embrace the fact that you are alive on this planet right now, against all the odds, and that you are very, very, very special. Everything around you is just as special and unique as you are.Every pause in conversation, every kiss you share, every tear drop you cry, every sound you hear, every blade of grass that whistles in the wind, every ray of sunlight that breaks through the clouds, every glass of water that trickles down your throat, every snowflake that falls on your face, every star that twinkles in the night sky, every speck of dust that you blow off your windowsill, every crunch of rock underneath your tires as you pull out of your driveway, every ant that you see crossing the sidewalk, every cricket that you hear chirping at night, every pair of eyes you’ve ever stared into, or hand you’ve ever held, or crease you’ve ever run your fingers through, every single thing on this world and in this life is unbelievably and unapologetically special.