Computer Fundamentals Exploring The Us Constitution Online: Fill & Download for Free

The question has been changed since I wrote this answer (in 2010), making the question much narrower!This answer is to the original question:Is the Universe a Simulation?I will first explain the difference in scope of these questions. Simulation is the general situation whereby information processes result in virtual systems that experience virtual worlds. The information processes do not need to be associated with a physical 'computer', i.e. there does not need to be any physical substrate underlying and implementing those information processes, (as is implied by the reference to the movie The Matrix). It is Naive Realism that causes us to assume that there must be an underlying physical substrate. See John Ringland's answer to What is naïve realism?However that assumption is known to lead to numerous paradoxes and explanatory gaps that can be overcome by overcoming that assumption. For example, see:John Ringland's answer to Can it ever be said that Scientific realism takes off from the springboard of commonsense or naive realism?John Ringland's answer to Has science become too dogmatic?John Ringland's answer to What is light made up of, particles or waves?Of particular note, quantum information processes enable observers to experience observables, which portray a classical universe. This is an example of a simulation process that operates at the level of the quantum field, prior to space, time, and all seemingly physical systems. There is no need for an underlying physical computer to implement the quantum field, instead the quantum field underlies all apparent physicality.Thus, most of the information in the answer below is not about the narrow context of "computer simulation" like in "The Matrix", although some of it could be applied to that. Instead it is about a deep metaphysical enquiry into the information theoretic foundations of what seems to be a physical universe but may in fact be virtual.For a detailed explanation of this broader context see The Objective Information Process & Virtual Subjective Experiences HypothesisNow for the original answer:I will not attempt to answer this question here, but merely provide some links to instances where the idea has been discussed. This idea is becoming increasingly popular within the scientific debate because it provides an explanatory framework that allows us to comprehend quantum phenomena that were previously incomprehensible...Whilst it is impossible to comprehend the quantum mechanical description of the universe in terms of 'physical' phenomena, at the same time we are finding that thinking in terms of information processes allows us to understand quantum phenomena, not as something bizarre and paradoxical, but as the natural & necessary properties of a simulated virtual reality.Simulated reality – Wikipedia http://bit.ly/cecMCSSimulated reality is the proposition that reality could be simulated—often computer simulated—to a degree indistinguishable from "true" reality. It could contain conscious minds which may or may not know that they are living inside a simulation. In its strongest form, the "simulation hypothesis" claims it is probable that we are actually living in such a simulation.This is different from the current, technologically achievable concept of virtual reality. Virtual reality is easily distinguished from the experience of "true" reality; participants are never in doubt about the nature of what they experience. Simulated reality, by contrast, would be hard or impossible to distinguish from "true" reality.The idea of a simulated reality raises several questions:Is it possible, even in principle, to tell whether we are in a simulated reality?Is there any difference between a simulated reality and a "real" one?How should we behave if we knew that we were living in a simulated reality?Digital Physics – Wikipedia http://bit.ly/cX4wQJIn physics and cosmology, digital physics is a collection of theoretical perspectives based on the premise that the universe is, at heart, describable by information, and is therefore computable. Therefore , the universe can be conceived as either the output of a computer program or as a vast, digital computation device (or, at least, mathematically isomorphic to such a device).Digital physics is grounded in one or more of the following hypotheses, listed in order of increasing boldness. The universe, or reality, is:Essentially informational (although not every informational ontology need be digital);Essentially digital;Itself a colossal computer;The output of a simulated reality exercise.Ross Rhodes http://bit.ly/akhqh6Quotes from “A Cybernetic Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics", which explores the parallels between quantum mechanics and the properties of a virtual reality."Many of the phenomena observed in the laboratory are puzzling because they are difficult to conceptualize as physical phenomena, yet they can be modeled exactly by mathematical manipulations. When we analogize to the operations of a digital computer, these same phenomena can be understood as logical and, in some cases, necessary features of computer programming designed to produce a virtual reality simulation" (Ross Rhodes)Edwin Fredkin http://bit.ly/arxLrgFinite Nature Hypothesis of Edwin Fredkin, which proposes that reality is finite and discrete in all ways and that there exists an iterative cellular automata computational process that underlies, manifests and 'computes' the phenomenon of existence.Cognitive Theoretic Model of the Universe CTMU http://bit.ly/aTEvNpThe Cognitive Theoretic Model of the Universe proposes that the universe is an 'utterance' within an abstract virtual-reality generative grammar.Process Physics http://bit.ly/dwnvQWproposes that reality is a self-referential information process producing fractal topological defects that form space and time.Digital Philosophy http://bit.ly/9RDKx4Digital Philosophy (DP) is a new way of thinking about the fundamental workings of processes in nature. DP is an atomic theory carried to a logical extreme where all quantities in nature are finite and discrete. Further, DP implies that nature harbors no infinities, infinitesimals, continuities, or locally determined random variables. At the most fundamental levels of physics, DP implies a totally discrete process called Digital Mechanics. Digital Mechanics (DM) must be a substrate for Quantum Mechanics.Zuse's Thesis: The Universe is a Computer http://bit.ly/cNc5AnKonrad Zuse (1910-1995; pronounce: "Conrud Tsoosay") not only built the first programmable computers (1935-1941) and devised the first higher-level programming language (1945), but also was the first to suggest (in 1967) that the entire universe is being computed on a computer, possibly a cellular automaton (CA). He referred to this as "Rechnender Raum" or Computing Space or Computing Cosmos. Many years later similar ideas were also published / popularized / extended by Edward Fredkin (1980s), Jürgen Schmidhuber (1990s - see overview), and more recently Stephen Wolfram (2002) (see comments and Edwin Clark's review page )Jürgen Schmidhuber's Computable Universes & Algorithmic Theory of Everything http://bit.ly/bgDcvZVarious articles exploring the issue: Is our universe just the output of a deterministic computer program?System Science of Virtual Reality: Toward the Unification of Empirical and Subjective Science http://bit.ly/9XhElBA book that describes the core mathematical and conceptual principles of information system theory, virtual reality and a re-derivation of quantum mechanics. Also discusses naïve realism and the hard problem of consciousness.Stephen Wolfram: A New Kind of Science http://bit.ly/9feS4u (read online)This long-awaited work from one of the world's most respected scientists presents a series of dramatic discoveries never before made public. Starting from a collection of simple computer experiments--illustrated in the book by striking computer graphics--Stephen Wolfram shows how their unexpected results force a whole new way of looking at the operation of our universe. Wolfram uses his approach to tackle a remarkable array of fundamental problems in science, from the origins of apparent randomness in physical systems, to the development of complexity in biology, the ultimate scope and limitations of mathematics, the possibility of a truly fundamental theory of physics, the interplay between free will and determinism, and the character of intelligence in the universe.In this book he advances the hypothesis that the universe and everything is being computed by a simple program.A review of “A New Kind of Science” http://bit.ly/ayPmdiWolfram claims in his book that the universe and everything is being computed by a simple program. This review illustrates that this idea is certainly not new to science, and it gives links to the prior work of Zuse.God Is the Machine – Article on Wired http://bit.ly/9KIRIjIn the beginning there was 0 and then there was 1. A mind-bending meditation on the transcendent power of digital computation.John Wheeler “It from bit” google search http://bit.ly/aEjjxLAnton Zeilinger – Quantum Centenial http://bit.ly/aMuYmd"we are gaining new insight into quantum mechanics itself by viewing it as an advanced theory of information."Many quotes from scientific sources related to this issue http://bit.ly/bi9sc5"Quantum theory is a method of representing quantumstuff mathematically: a model of the world executed in symbols." (N. Herbert)"In contrast to the mechanistic Cartesian view of the world, the world-view emerging from modern physics can be characterized by words like organic, holistic, and ecological. It might also be called a systems view, in the sense of general systems theory. The universe is no longer seen as a machine, made up of a multitude of objects, but has to be pictured as one indivisible dynamic whole whose parts are essentially interrelated and can be understood only as patterns of a cosmic process." (Fritjof Capra)"The process metaphysics elaborated in Process and Reality (Whitehead) proposes that the fundamental elements of the universe are occasions of experience. According to this notion, what people commonly think of as concrete objects are actually successions of occasions of experience. Occasions of experience can be collected into groupings; something complex such as a human being is thus a grouping of many smaller occasions of experience. According to Whitehead, everything in the universe is characterized by experience (which is not to be confused with consciousness); there is no mind-body duality under this system, because "mind" is simply seen as a very developed kind of experiencing." (Process Philosophy)Epistemological Problems of Perception (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) http://bit.ly/aZcY7TThe historically most central epistemological issue concerning perception, to which this article will be almost entirely devoted, is whether and how beliefs about physical objects and about the physical world generally can be justified or warranted on the basis of sensory or perceptual experience — where it is internalist justification, roughly having a reason to think that the belief in question is true, that is mainly in question. This issue, commonly referred to as “the problem of the external world,” divides into two closely related sub-issues, which correspond to the first two main sections below. The first of these issues has to do with the nature of sensory experience and its relation to the physical world; it is typically formulated as the question of what are the immediate objects of awareness in sensory experience or, in a variant but essentially equivalent terminology, of what is given in such experience. The second issue has to do with the way in which beliefs about the physical world are justified on the basis of such sensory experience.The Scientific Case Against Materialism http://bit.ly/9uDhXtA story told through quotes, comments and links related to commonsense (naive) realism, epistemology, materialism, information theoretic metaphysics, consciousness, empirical science, mysticism, holistic science and also system theory. There's some fascinating links to profound experiments into the nature of consciousness if you don't already know about them... (The PEAR REG/GCP experiments)Metaphysics of Virtual Reality http://bit.ly/9Z12ChIf a computer creates a virtual reality within which artificially intelligent beings contemplate their situation, how would such a world seem to them? What metaphysical concepts would they arive at? What would it be like to be an AI being in a virtual world? I propose this hypothetical situation as an adjunct to direct metaphysical discussion regarding our reality. It provides a neatly defined context for analysis that has some interesting parallels with our own context.Computational Paradigm http://bit.ly/9Ktr5dComputation is a fundamental principle, it is not simply a high level phenomenon that electronic computers engage in. Because information is discernible difference and the difference relies upon discernment to become information, the act of perception is inherently implied within the very concept of information. From out of a field of variation a perceptual system recognises certain variations, which become information that informs the system and the remainder becomes entropy, which still effects the system although in subtler ways such as noise or heat. Information is one of the most abstract and general substances that there is; but the concept of information is meaningless without the concept of perception (i.e. the receipt, interpretation, experience and assimilation of information). Perception is an inherently computational process so computation is itself fundamental.Cartesian Dualism and an Information Theoretic Metaphysics http://bit.ly/b6ZiWiCartesian dualism has been much abused as a concept but it does contain some truth, that systems have a distinct inner and outer aspect. The misuse arises because we only ever experience ourselves from within and external objects from without, hence our limited experience led people to postulate that they were "alive and conscious" whereas external objects were "inanimate". Materialism or Cartesian dualism proposes that the inner and outer aspects are separated, but this is true only from a perspective embedded within the simulation. ALL manifest systems have both inner and outer aspects, there are no purely inner or conscious entities and no purely outer or inanimate entities, all have both aspects.Contexts of Understanding http://bit.ly/dyIUrkIn relation to any 'reality' there are always two apparent contexts. A few examples are that one cannot have a story without a book being read, or a movie without a movie reel in a projector, or a virtual reality without a computational process. In each of these examples the first is an empirical context (objects, places and events) and the second is a transcendent context (that which creates and sustains the empirical context).Mathematical Analysis http://bit.ly/dvGAE7Mathematical analyses of various aspects of general systems, general information processes, virtual reality simulation and virtual universes.There are many other instances, however these links provide a starting point from which to explore further.Whilst the metaphor of “simulation by computers” is very modern, the underlying ideas have been proposed for many thousands of years using various metaphors. This has not gone unnoticed by some scientists..."The concepts of science show strong similarities to the concepts of the mystics... The philosophy of mystical traditions, the perennial philosophy, is the most consistent philosophical background to modern science." (Fritjof Capra)The underlying idea is that there exists non-physical processes that permeate the physical realm and that have not only a causative role, but also a formative and animating role. Thus the innermost animating essence within ourselves (pure awareness) is the cosmic process that animates all things.For example, in Vedanta the metaphor of a snake and a rope has been used. The point of this metaphor is that the rope only seems to become a snake due to our interpretations, it doesn't actually turn into a snake. Thus the snake is a virtual phenomenon. They further claim that the universe is likewise a virtual phenomenon.Quotes from Ancient sources related to this issue http://bit.ly/cRfBHP"To Sankara the world is only relatively real (Vyavaharika Satta). He advocated Vivarta-Vada [virtuality] or the theory of appearance or superimposition (Adhyasa). Just as snake is superimposed on the rope in twilight [when one mistakes a rope for a snake], this world and body are superimposed on Brahman or the Supreme Self [computational process]... In Vivarta-Vada, the cause produces the effect without undergoing any change in itself. Snake is only an appearance on the rope. The rope has not transformed itself into a snake, like milk into curd. Brahman is immutable and eternal. Therefore, It cannot change Itself into the world. Brahman becomes the cause of the world through Maya, which is Its inscrutable mysterious power [virtual reality simulation]..." (Sankaracharya)"Wisdom is eternal, for it precedes every beginning and all created reality... [It is] everywhere... in every tastable thing... burning in all things... the animating power of things... [Wisdom] tastes us. And there is nothing more delicious to comprehend." (Nicholas of Cusa)“I have often said God is creating this entire world full and entire in this present now... There where time never penetrates, where no image shines in, in the innermost and highest aspect of the soul God creates the entire cosmos.” (Meister Eckhart)“He who sees the Supreme Lord [transcendent process], who is present equally in all creatures, who is not destroyed even when they are, he may be said to have truly perceived. Perceiving the Lord as equally pervading everywhere, he does not let his self-sense [egoic delusion] destroy his true Self [awareness of ones transcendent nature] and, in that way, he attains a state of excellence [true understanding and alignment with reality]. He who perceives that all aspects of actions are performed only through prakriti and also that the self is a non-doer [universal consciousness is the only doer], he may be said to have truly perceived. On perceiving that the multifarious aspect of things is located in one point [the transcendent process], from where it extends severally, he attains the Brahman [union with reality].Without beginning, devoid of qualities, the Supreme Self, imperishable, though stationed in the body, neither acts nor is touched in any way... Just as ether, pervading everything, is unsmeared on account of its rarefied nature, in the same way the Self, present in everybody, is not besmirched.Just as the Sun, alone, lights up this entire world, so also does the Keeper of the field light up this entire field... those who in this way, through the eye of wisdom, perceive the difference between the field and the one who knows it, and the manner of release of all beings from prakriti [overcoming the world illusion through detachment, transcendent knowledge and unconditioned awareness], they obtain the Supreme." (Bhagavad Gita, chpt 13)"The real does not die, the unreal never lived. Once you know that death happens to the body and not to you, you just watch your body falling off like a discarded garment. The real you is timeless and beyond birth and death." (Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj)"What is it that had birth? Whom do you call a human being? If, instead of seeking explanations for birth, death and after-death, the question is raised as to who and how you are now, these questions will not arise... The realised one enjoys unbroken consciousness, never broken by birth or death - how can he die?.. There is no incarnation, either now, before or hereafter." (Sri Ramana Maharshi)"That which is the subtle essence, in it is the self of all that exists. It is the True. It is the Self, and thou... art it." (Chandogya Upanishad 4:10:1-3)Correspondences with other Metaphysical Paradigms http://bit.ly/cxZZGnQuotes showing correspondence between the computational metaphysical paradigm and several ancient metaphysical paradigms.A Survey of the Transcendent Perspective in Ancient Traditions http://bit.ly/aPRm48Quotes illustrating metaphors for the transcendent computational process underlying the manifest universe.Consciousness, Self, World, Virtual Reality and Liberation http://bit.ly/a6QN3gAlso see John Ringland's answer to What is consciousness?, which provides further background required in order to understand how it is that the universe may be virtual, yet still seem physical.All of this shows that there is a long history to these ideas, that there are a growing number who are seriously contemplating them and that the implications are subtle, deep and profound.This simple idea may also provide a cognitive structure with which to integrate knowledge derived from both quantum mechanics and mystic insight, thus potentially bringing an end to thousands of years of cognitive repression.The following quote from the article "Cognitive repression in contemporary physics" by Evelyn Fox Keller (1979) http://dx.doi.org/10.1119/1.11911 addresses the issue of quantum mechanics within science, but it also applies equally to mysticism in general society."Piaget has invited the comparison between the historical development of scientific thought and the cognitive development of the child. Both, it is suggested, proceed through the emergence of discrete stages of structural organization, each stage brings with it new possibilities of conceptual integration, and concurrently, the possibility of a verbal articulation of the new level of organization perceived. Prior to the establishment of a new conceptual structure, knowledge already present in nonverbal forms (in e.g., sensorimotor rather than representation schemes) finds no avenue of expression, and, to the extent that it jars with the earlier established structures, demands cognitive repression. Piaget [1] tells us that an action schema which "cannot be integrated into the system of conscious concepts is eliminated... (and) repressed from conscious territory before it has penetrated there in any conceptualized form." Caught in a transition between stages, the child, when pressed to articulate perceptions requiring cognitive structures which are not yet available, displays confusion, denial and avoidance - a disequilibrium strikingly reminiscent of the mechanism of affective repression."With the end of this irrational (but understandable) repression of the issue, now society may be able to rationally explore this issue and even develop a mathematical science that explains it in detail. For example, see System Science of Virtual Reality: Toward the Unification of Empirical and Subjective Science http://bit.ly/9XhElBFinally, regarding "Is the universe a simulation in someone's computer?" I would answer "No!". There is no need to hypothesise the existence of some physical computer underlying the cosmic computational processes. Information and computation are fundamental and give rise to all other phenomena; space, time, energy, force, particles, planets, people, etc. All of this is computational and virtual, thus there need not be a single speck of matter involved at any stage."When you come to the ultimate particles constituting matter, there seems to be no point in thinking of them again as consisting of some material. They are as it were, pure shape, nothing but shape; what turns up again and again in successive observations is this shape, not an individual speck of material." (Erwin Schrödinger)

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.

I think that this is a very important question, perhaps the most important question of our generation. 2 very popular books related to this subject are:Guns, Germs, and SteelPoor EconomicsSome answers here have said promote capitalist free markets (Aria), institutional reforms (Marc), make governments change the way they do things (Ali), improve education and funding for infrastructure (Marwan), and these are fantastic points! There are also a lot of people who will say eliminate corruption, reduce religious fanaticism, pay teachers better, use population control mechanisms, etc.But, one very important point to consider is that it’s not likely that the smart, motivated people who want to end poverty will have power to change corrupt local governments or village leadership across poor countries.I think the question can be rephrased to what can you, the reader (perhaps you’re an aspiring social entrepreneur), do to eliminate or reduce poverty worldwide.You don’t have the political connections to influence the President of Mali or the Chief Minister of Bengal.You don’t have the money to give to all the poor of the world ($20–30T per year required), or too build them schools, hospitals, and the likes.I recently wrote an article how we social entrepreneurs and visionaries can together end poverty: How to end World Poverty and Racial Power Imbalance in 1 Generation.The answer is to couple conditional cash transfer with industry demand for skilled talent in a sustainable, profitable, and scalable for-profit business model.Pay a few majority world people to learn and master a skill (i.e. Python software development or UX design).Find a company or person in a developed country who has a need for a person with that particular skill and is open to hiring a remote worker.Make the match and take either a finder’s fee or a cut on the hourly rate. Use these earnings to pay for education of more majority worlders.Majority worlders making $10–20K per year bring a HUGE amount of money into their communities. The wealth spreads to their day laborers, restaurants, shops, service providers, educational institutions, etc.This is my vision of “Learning Dollars Talent” - to pay people to learn and then profitably connect them with global talent or production demand.I went over a few seminal points in the blog piece that we must understand:Per Capita Wealth correlates with “Race”. Below are figures I made.Maybe Inequality is OK but we have problems if(Issue #1) if one individual group or race or location controls more than half of the wealth of the world(Issue #2) if a non-trivial fraction of people of any group or race cannot have a respectable lifestyle; note, the vast majority of people in today’s developed countries enjoy a respectable lifestyle, namely:enough foodclean waterclean infrastructure and housingconsistent electricity and energy supplyinternetquality healthcarefreedom / explorationuniversal education (access to MOOCs and K-12 school counts and suffices)Unfortunately both of the above two issues are true right now.Fortunately, this may change in 20–30 years.I believe the two issues above are important because if one group controls more than half of the wealth of the world, then you enter into a sort of global scale cronyism by race, group, or location, which is an obstruction to equal opportunity that can be subtle to infer. It also is bad for business.e.g. Software companies hiring only within their geographic location (i.e. Silicon Valley, Manhattan, etc.) where the majority of developers fit a certain profile. As opposed to hiring from a more diverse and larger global pool of developers, particularly when all the work can be done online, from anywhere in the world.In fact this cronyism by race, group, or location can sometimes undermine the free market and what is good for business! Of course, there is diversity in US-based knowledge workers and immigration exists. But those numbers don’t put a dent in achieving merit-based, global scale, equal opportunity in knowledge work — the way a true free market or optimal firm would.Wealth sort of flows like peanut butter. You have incredible amounts of wealth in New York and California and it just doesn’t flow to the smart folks in Nigeria and Bangladesh who also want to contribute!Entrepreneurship, design, and product development by the poor for the rich, can solve global development and power imbalance in less than a generation. The internet, air conditioning, MOOCs, and modern conditional cash transfer can facilitate this creation of a more or less equal and developed world.Now, is the problem poverty or inequality? Below are figures I made. By performing a simple cross-analysis between countries by nominal GDP per capita, countries by Human Development Index, and the list of developed countries, we find that most developed countries have GDP per capita figures above 10K and most countries with GDP per capita figures above 10K are developed. Hence millennials should go forward with the quite realistic and commendable goal that every continent and region of the world should achieve a nominal GDP per capita of 10K USD within a generation.As we can see below, the world produces slightly more than enough wealth each year: 11.6K USD per head, which is remarkable. Around 1/2 of the world is poor, 1/4 is very close to being developed, and 1/4 is already very developed. We are closer than ever in all of history to eliminating mass poverty, which was considered impossible to remove for the history of civilization. The local-scale poverty problem at this stage is literally just a global-scale distribution problem. We don’t even have to reduce bias and prejudice, just avert it. I’ll explain this detail shortly.With a keen eye, you can see that while poor, non-developed, and almost-developed regions (Asia, Latin America, Africa) control much less than half of the wealth of the world (37%) they command almost half of the nominal GDP (47%).At this stage, it’s important to note that the global scale problem (inter-country) is much more important than the local one to solve (intra-country). As you can see from this human development index by country data, as countries get richer they tend to sort out grotesque issues and make sure that there’s some baseline safety net, minimum wage, or welfare benefits for the majority of citizens.Also it is important to consider the GDP growth rate of the West versus the rest of the world. The GDP growth rate of the West is around 2.2%, because the GDP growth rate of the European Union is 2%, the GDP growth rate of Northern America is 2.4%, and the GDP growth rate of Australia is around 2.2-2.4% as well. On the other hand the GDP growth rate of the rest of the world is 3.5% (grew from $39.7T to $41.1T last year), because the GDP growth rate of the world is 3% (grew $2.4T last year to $88T total) and the West whose GDP is $46.9T contributed only $1T of that growth.Extrapolating out 3.5% GDP growth for the majority world and 2.2% GDP growth for the West, we see that the majority world should be able to control a majority of the wealth of the world within a generation. However, it is important to understand the mechanisms by which the majority-world will be able to do so. Specifically, later in this answer, I will describe how the majority-world can train knowledge workers, whose abundance is key to producing affluent societies.To prevent the cronyism of a rich area only buying from / hiring its own people, interestingly, we must place an importance on racial and ethnic diversity in the USA. As you can see from the above points, the United States dominates the global economy, wealth, GDP, and corporate world. These factors have strong influence on the entire world. Hence it is important that urban areas and corporate environments in the United States are majority-minority, diverse, and balanced in terms of power. This is right because decisions made in the United States’ corporate world impact the entire world. Thankfully the US is becoming majority-minority. And overall, there is a balance of powers between all the different religions in the world. So, it’s becoming everyone’s best interest to hire in a meritocratic way, rather than hiring and buying from only your fellow countrymen (people who look like you).To achieve universal development across the continents within a generation, say by 2050, based on the above discussion of wealth and GDP, I think we need to create a $20T per year cross-industry transaction from rich corporations and consumers with specific needs, to people in poor countries rendering useful service.I believe that across the majority world (Africa, India, non-IndoChina Asia, and parts of Latin America) developing world entrepreneurs and knowledge workers can create GDP gains of$5T by seizing opportunities in Software and IT$1T by seizing opportunities in Agriculture and Fishing$1–4T by seizing opportunities in Complex Manufacturing and reducing the West’s cut on Textiles$1T by seizing opportunities in Mining$3T by creating a tourism and travel industry particularly targeted at millennialsRight now, the world’s countries overall attract 1.3B tourists but half of the tourists are just going to Europe and 1.1B tourists are just going to already developed areas. Only 210M (of 1.3B total) tourists are visiting developing countries, which is a shame since developing countries are more diverse, more authentic (less commercial), and significantly more affordable travel experiences.$1.5T by competing with existing players in transportation of humans and cargo by air and ship$1.5T by seizing opportunities in construction$1T by seizing opportunities in real estate$1T by seizing opportunities in energy$3T by seizing opportunities in banking and fintech$1T by seizing opportunities in destination retirement and expat servicesSo you see that there are over $20T in opportunities for the majority world to seize. The problem is there aren’t enough qualified entrepreneurs and knowledge workers in these countries (despite their huge populations) to take these opportunities.When I was in my masters at Stanford from 2016-18, I did a passion project called Conditional Payments Incentivize Online Freelancers to Learn Skills (with some advice from Prof Michael Bernstein). This project provides insight into how we can produce a population of smart, majority-world entrepreneurs and knowledge workers.Based on the above short research project, and the wealth of convincing research on the effectiveness of conditional cash transfer, I believe that paying people to learn complex skills can produce the skilled, majority-world knowledge workers we need for global economic development and achieve the universal development and power balance stated at the beginning of this article. Specifically I propose MOOC-driven training pipelines for different professions:SOFTWARE ENGINEER PIPELINE (this pipeline is in active use at LD Talent)Incentive Module$15+ English Language, Grammar, Idioms$30+ Introductory Computer Science, Source Control, Internet Concepts, UNIX$15+ Computer Science Lab Practical (i.e. via Codility)$30+ Resumé and Portfolio Project Prep$40+ Elective Demo Project 1 (instructions)$40+ Elective Demo Project 2 (instructions)$170+ Total Incentives Paid to Successful Candidate$400+ Total Cost to Incentive Giving Organization (CTIGO) covers for the sunk cost of program dropoutsYou can extrapolate pipelines for training other roles like designers, entrepreneurs, and even doctors, scientists, and traditional engineers.Now, let’s take a step back and look at the cultural impact. Wouldn’t it be a dream to live in a world where the streets of Mogadishu, Addis, Accra, Abuja, Karachi, Caracas, Medellin, Managua, Indore, Dhaka, Kanpur, Patna, Pune, Vientiane, and so on were plastered with styled billboards reading:$150 Reward for Learning Multivariate Calculus$300 Reward for Learning UNIX$150 Reward for Learning UX Fundamentals$600 Reward for Learning Biostatistics$300 Reward for Learning Quantum Mechanicsand so on, …People just have to pick and choose, learn and earn – easy. For motivated people, such CCT would be more lucrative than the informal economy or criminal activity selling cocaine or joining gangs, the mafia, or pirates.This conditional cash transfer is distinct from other government sponsored CCT’s because it plays well with capitalism. It’s part of a scalable, for-profit business model which connects these trained people to well-paying jobs. (Or it leads to successful new business in the case of the entrepreneurship pipeline.)This group of majority world entrepreneurs needs to be well educated, bold, persevering, charismatic, clever, frugal, cognizant, self-aware, informed, resourceful, empathetic, and strategic with time. They should have mastered a significant fraction of established knowledge through MOOCs, but they should also be well-read, film-aware, well-traveled (i.e. poor country denizens can visit other poor countries visa-free and cheap), well-networked, startup-aware, physically healthy, emotionally balanced, groomed, inspired, fun-loving, exploratory, politically plugged-in, and financially smart.In summary, the opportunities are there. The problem is the majority world doesn’t have enough enterprising, educated people to take these opportunities. Hence, I have proposed a market-driven conditional cash transfer to produce that population of majority world entrepreneurs and knowledge workers.What will we have in the end? After a generation of doing all the above (20-25 years):Control of wealth will be “majority-minority”. In other words, no one group or race should control more than half of the wealth or GDP of the world. What I think it will work out to be:Asia sans IndoChina – $65T GDP, $275T Wealththe West – $70T GDP, $500T Wealthby then racially diverse:minorities constituting 55% of US, 20% of EU, 32% overallChina – $40T GDP, $200T WealthLatin America – $10T GDP, $30T WealthAfrica – $15T GDP, $60T WealthIndia – $15T GDP, $60T WealthUniversal development of the continents:All regions should have a nominal GDP per capita >= 10K USD. Citizens of all regions should have:enough foodclean waterclean infrastructure and housingconsistent electricity and energy supplyinternetquality healthcarefreedom / explorationuniversal educationaccess to MOOCs and K-12 school counts and sufficesIt’s decent but not a utopia. People all over the world should live like the current day Turkish, Chinese, Malaysians, and Kazakhs — i.e. reasonably developed but not extravagantly wasteful.As you can see from the above predictions, the West will still have a disproportionate amount of wealth and GDP for its population, but the West will control a large minority, not a majority, of the wealth and GDP of the world. That being said, the West is very diverse due to immigration, and the US is becoming majority-minority (within 25 years), so such wealth will be somewhat distributed across different racial groups even within the West.The above predictions will allow all cultures (from Norway to Chad) to live in a decently developed fashion, and hence be able to respect each other, eliminating much of what is the cause of racial power imbalance. The disproportionate wealth differentials will not matter as they will be balanced by population sizes (i.e. the West is wealthier per head but has less heads – Asia+Africa will still control more wealth / GDP).What this answer (heavily based on my blog piece) proposes is a concrete plan to, in a single generation, level global inequalities and poverties that have built up over the last 500 years. This is in order to create a better world of politico-economic balance, racial equality, mass education as a recurring financial investment, distributed and diverse workforces, research and development as a culture, broadly high human development, and mutual respect of well-informed peoples.