Here I try to keep track of original ideas I've had over the years, which I do for a number of reasons:
These are what I consider my most interesting and important ideas based on what's happening right now.
Idea Short Description | Idea Date | Reference |
---|---|---|
Most software-and businesses-will be replaced by an AI-powered combination of 1) State(Context), Policy, Questions, and Action (SPQA) | March 2023 | SPQA Essay |
Everyone will soon have an (AI-powered) Digital Assistant (DA) | 2016 | |
Our DAs will know everything about us and will be able to use that comprehensive context to anticipate our needs | 2016 | |
Everything will get an API, including people (called Daemons for people), businesses, and common objects | 2016 | |
People's DAs will become their principals' mediators for interacting with the world through the Daemons and APIs that exist in the world | 2016 | |
The toal TAM for AI is a combination of 1) total human workforce cost, and 2) how much current and future companies will pay to start, 10x, or 100x their business | January 2025 | |
Companies will primarily become APIs, and marketplaces of those APIs will be the primary business discovery mechanism (for DAs) | 2016 | |
This will massively disrupt SEO because it will be DAs that need to be convinced of the usefulness of a given service | 2016 | |
Entirely new types of companies will arise that specialize in discovering and rating all the APIs for a given type of service so that DAs can decide which is best for their principal | 2016 | |
AR interfaces through glasses and other lenses will be used by our DAs to show us views of the world based on API (Daemon) information around us | 2016 | |
Reality is layer-dependent and includes emergence, so truth at one layer can be completely nonsensical to the layers below | 2024 | |
Free will is an example of layer-dependent truth, as it can be said to exist at the human layer but not at layers below | 2023 | |
AUG vs. NAUG could be used to describe people who are augmented by AI/technology and those who are not | 2012 |
This section has a bit more detail about each idea.
If you think about most products and services, they're largely just executing on these components in different ways.
I've come to believe that complex human issues like free will and existentialism come down to understanding that reality has multiple layers. I feel like The Fabric of Reality, by David Deusch, is a good starting point for this idea, although I've been grappling with it for years before reading it in 2024.
The idea is practical rather than technical. It's the notion that each layer of reality is valid on its own, and there isn't an actual "true" reality. Or to put in another way, the way you frame your question and your desired outcomes determines which layers of reality—and thus which truths—get engaged for the answer.
E.g.:
Technically, your neighbor is a mechanistic creature that lacks free will, so he didn't have a choice about whether or not to take your figs. But right now your kid is asking why he can't have a fig, and why your neighborhood is selling them across the street. So the physics conversation is rather moot.
Same with enjoying ice cream, or friendship, or trying to do good in the world. At some layer they're likely all meaningless, but that doesn't matter for humans because we live spend our entire lives in layers where they do.
Humans vibrate at a particular set of layers based on our physical makeup combined with the rules of the universe, and the reactions between those ultimately determine what is real to us. And it's the same for anything else. Meaning, reality, and truth are all dependent on who's asking the questions, and for what reasons.
These are two terms I came up with in 2008 that we would eventually use for talking about people who were augmented with tech—or not. My goal was to have them be easy to say and single syllable.
First, agumented.
And then non-augmented.
🚧 (Still adding my ideas...)
Again, a major reason for doing this is to encourage others—namely you—to build your own version of this page. Please make one and send it to me.