Transcendent Man + Share and become rich

If you wish to know what the future will look like, I highly recommend watching the Transcendent Man, an hour-long documentary on the life and ideas of futurist and inventor Raymond Kurzweil.

Kurzweil basically argues, in his book The Singularity, that as soon as 2029, technology and artificial intelligence will be so fast and sophisticated that it will "fold on itself" and dramatically accelerate its own development.

Bill Gates himself acknowledges that Kurzweil is the best at predicting technological trends, so it would be rather unwise to dismiss his ideas as being too farfetched.

From my own experience, having delved into artificial intelligence research since last summer (2010) and various technologies like video capture and editing (using Camtasia in particular), I tend to believe Kurzweil.

What does this mean for you, practically speaking?

How is Kurzweil related to success?

Well, no matter how you define "success" and in what areas you wish experience more success, one thing is for sure: you can benefit greatly by learning to use technology STRATEGICALLY.

Technology is, in the end, only an amplifier; an accelerator; a multiplier.

It must have something to amplify, accelerate, or multiply.

So if you concentrate your efforts, energies, ideas, abilities, strengths, etc. and create VALUE, then technology (which, as Kurzweil correctly mentions, will grow EXPONENTIALLY) will amplify, accelerate and multiply your VALUE.

Yes, this means you can become very rich very fast.

This is not something historically new: Henry Ford took a while to become rich through the automobile industry, Bill Gates took less time, Jeff Bezos (Amazon) took even less time, and pretty soon, smart teenagers can become super-rich by floating a new product or app via Facebook or similar social media.

Teenagers or young people in their 20s will be more fluent in the usage of cutting-edge technologies, thus they will only have to create some value (product or service) and be able to market it, technologically, to millions of people.

I say "market" but perhaps that word is no longer accurate. "Sharing" one's products (and of course giving away the early versions for free -- this is called beta testing) is a better term.

The current issue of Harvard Business Review has an interesting article on how making your product "shareable" (by inserting a Share button) will multiply marketing effectiveness by 400%!

This is incredible when you think about it, because business has traditionally been about "exploitation." A business owner exploits the labor (the services that workers provide) in order to maximize profits.

In the New Economy (which, again, will be run by and through continually evolving technologies and AI, as Kurweil points out), it is by SHARING that you will become rich.

Think about this for a minute.

It means that the more of a caring and generous person you are, the faster you will achieve financial freedom and wealth.

(to be continued)