Clay Shirky uses the term “cognitive surplus” to describe this process. He defines it as “the ability of the world’s population to volunteer and to contribute and collaborate on large, sometimes global, projects.” “Wikipedia took one hundred million hours of volunteer time to create,” says Shirky.

One tool that harnesses all four of these motivators is called the incentive prize. If you need to accelerate change in specific areas, especially when the goals are clear and measurable, incentive competitions have a biological advantage. Humans are wired to compete. We’re wired to hit hard targets. Incentive prizes are a proven way to entice the smartest people in the world, no matter where they live or where they’re employed, to work on your particular problem.

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nanotechnology has the potential to enhance human performance, to bring sustainable development for materials, water, energy, and food, to protect against unknown bacteria and viruses, and even to diminish the reasons for breaking the peace [by creating universal abundance].

Thousands of years ago, it was only kings, pharaohs, and emperors who had the ability to solve large-scale problems. Hundreds of years ago, this power expanded to the industrialists who built our transportation systems and financial institutions. But today, the ability to solve such problems has been thoroughly democratized. Right now, and for the first time ever, a passionate and committed individual has access to the technology, minds, and capital required to take on any challenge. Even better, that individual has good reason to take on such challenges. As we will soon see, the world's biggest problems are now the world's biggest business opportunities. This means, for exponential entrepreneurs, finding a significant challenge is a meaningful road to wealth. Ultimately, as I teach at Singularity University (much more on this later), the best way to become a billionaire is to solve a billion-person problem.

Peter's Laws™ The Creed of the Persistent and Passionate Mind 1. If anything can go wrong, fix it! (To hell with Murphy!) 2. When given a choice — take both! 3. Multiple projects lead to multiple successes. 4. Start at the top, then work your way up. 5. Do it by the book . . . but be the author! 6. When forced to compromise, ask for more. 7. If you can't win, change the rules. 8. If you can't change the rules, then ignore them. 9. Perfection is not optional. 10. When faced without a challenge — make one. 11. No simply means begin one level higher. 12. Don't walk when you can run. 13. When in doubt: THINK! 14. Patience is a virtue, but persistence to the point of success is a blessing. 15. The squeaky wheel gets replaced. 16. The faster you move, the slower time passes, the longer you live. 17. The best way to predict the future is to create it yourself! 18. The ratio of something to nothing is infinite. 19. You get what you incentivize. 20. If you think it is impossible, then it is for you. 21. An expert is someone who can tell you exactly how something can't be done. 22. The day before something is a breakthrough, it's a crazy idea. 23. If it was easy, it would have been done already. 24. Without a target you'll miss it every time. 25. Fail early, fail often, fail forward! 26. If you can't measure it, you can't improve it. 27. The world's most precious resource is the persistent and passionate human mind. 28. Bureaucracy is an obstacle to be conquered with persistence, confidence, and a bulldozer when necessary.

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industrialized model of education, with its emphasis on the rote memorization of facts, is no longer necessary. Facts are what Google does best. But creativity, collaboration, critical thinking, and problem solving — that's a different story. These skills have been repeatedly stressed by everyone from corporate executives to education experts as the fundamentals required by today's jobs.

In 2018, Apple spent over $1 billion on original programming, while Amazon dropped $5 billion. Sling, YouTube, Hulu, even that guy who repairs lawnmowers and has three million followers on Facebook — they're all coming to eat Hollywood's lunch.

From the very beginning of time until the year 2003," says Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt, "humankind created five exabytes of digital information. An exabyte is one billion gigabytes — or a 1 with eighteen zeroes after it. Right now, in the year 2010, the human race is generating five exabytes of information every two days. By the year 2013, the number will be five exabytes produced every ten minutes … It's no wonder we're exhausted.

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How Musk chooses which streams to explore depends on the relationship between those probabilities and the importance of his objective. “Even if the probability for success is fairly low, if the objective is really important, it’s still worth doing. Conversely, if the objective is less important, then the probability needs to be much greater. How I decide which projects to take on depends on probability multiplied by the importance of the objective.

He described three stages to their development. "In the beginning," says Clarke, "people tell you that's a crazy idea, and it'll never work. Next, people say your idea might work, but it's not worth doing. Finally, eventually, people say, I told you that it was a great idea all along!