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Here are my thoughts

1) Free p2p money transfers / gateway to bitcoin or other crypto-currency so that it's more widely adopted

2) Better open bank accounts - allowing open transparent accounting for organizations and companies

3) Solve democracy - better analytical tools for mass discussion, arguments and decision making which will encourage use of facts and science, and discourage politics

4) Human-Machine interfaces - memory augmentation

5) Solve the common cold and influenza

6) Robotics - better batteries, finer motors and sensors - possibly through the usage of biological systems

7) Public access to satellites - realtime security monitoring, crops analytics and forecasting

8) Solve weather or create private air-conditioned jackets ;)



For 3) Solve democracy, a friend showed me pol.is (neat demo of it: https://pol.is/demo/2demo).

Anyway, it's description is..."pol.is brings AI & machine learning to participatory democracy. Scale up outreach in online consultation & get powerful insights that can shape and legitimize policy." It would be amazing if U.S. politics could be grounded in legitimate understanding of each other.


The problem is not making the tools, it's getting everybody to learn and use them.


I'm wondering if some kind of mind-map/graph mashed-up with a wikipedia model and "likes" on each node, can help drive decisions or is it just too naive/simplistic and low adoption


It starts with the issue that most people don't especially like to use computers and will avoid them if they can.


7) there are several companies in this space, https://www.planet.com/ being one, and they're acquiring another one, Terra Bella (formerly Skybox), the deal is on the front page right now: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13573523). There might be more that I don't remember.


Hasn't Johnny Mnemonic taught you anything???




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