On Our Way to Collective Superintelligence

When a friend recommended Steemit to me this past Wednesday, I immediately felt the need to look into it. I've been thinking about getting serious with freelance writing, although I don't really want any clients, so this seems like the perfect opportunity. Not only that, but I bought two books a few weeks ago that are having a big impact on me. One of them is called Blockchain Revolution by Don Tapscott and Alex Tapscott. What are the odds that I would purchase this particular book mere weeks before I was introduced to Steemit?

So here I am, trying to really believe we can get our shit together and work on fixing or replacing our broken systems, including (and especially) our financial and educational systems.

The problem is, I don't know that much about how blockchain tech, global financial and educational systems in general, or even the full underlying principle(s) of Steemit. I believe in the power of learning, though. So in writing this post, I'm starting a twofold process: first, that I can finally make a habit of writing for an audience and learn all about the fascinating new futuristic technologies and human interactions I'm naturally drawn to, and second, that I can contribute to what appears to be the birth of a new collective superintelligence.

Collective superintelligence is a term I learned from the other book I'm reading: Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies by Nick Bostrom. This is how he defines it:

Collective superintelligence: A system composed of a large number of smaller intellects such that the system's overall performance across many very general domains vastly outstrips that of any current cognitive system (p. 65).

Although Bostrom was referring to machine AI, and the actual term I might want to use here is collective intelligence (reddit, etc.), I prefer using superintelligence because Steemit seems supercharged! Please note the distinction when referring to either term in more formal environments.

Decentralizing Education

If we're going to decentralize our currency, perhaps we should also decentralize education. You'll see how this all ties together in a moment. Academia has been restricted to the privileged for such a huge part of human history, and still today there are individuals with incredibly high potential that cannot achieve their dreams because of the level of difficulty in funding their own education. The fact remains: we are approaching an era that will demand humanity's full intellectual potential. Is it not a problem that a great majority of the world STILL DOES NOT HAVE ACCESS TO QUALITY EDUCATION?

Here's what I'm going to do for myself regarding the educational expense problem: I have applied and been accepted to University of the People where I will begin a tuition-free four-year program in the fall to obtain a degree in Business Administration. (I chose this degree option because of my current job.) In conjunction with this structured online education, I'm going to regularly blog on Steemit about the topics I find the most interesting, such as the future of humanity, future technologies, science fiction, and anything else that my curiosities happen to be engaged in. The role Steemit will play is important because I believe in the collective abilities of humanity to end suffering and bring about peace. Reddit has demonstrated that Truth can and will be upvoted! Steemit incentivizes the upvoting of Truth.

Introduce Yourself

My name is Katie and I reside in Maryland, USA. I fancy myself a writer and enthusiast of the future. I believe Steemit can help the less fortunate fund their own education by non-traditional means, and I intend to prove this theory.

I'm working on a major non-fiction writing project for self-learning that will enable me to have a well-rounded approach to solving global problems. I'll probably talk about this project a lot since it is a great source of mental energy for me. I BELIEVE A WELL-ROUNDED APPROACH IS NOT ONLY THE BEST APPROACH, BUT ALSO SHOULD BE THE ONLY APPROACH. YOU CANNOT CREATE A REPLACEMENT SOCIAL SUB-SYSTEM WITHOUT FIRST UNDERSTANDING HOW OTHER SUB-SYSTEMS WILL BE IMPACTED.

Once this project is completed, I will write a speculative fiction novel demonstrating how an ideal future society might look AND it will include the TRANSITIONAL PHASE between what we have now and what the future will look like. I'm so tired of speculative fiction novels that warn about the future without ever describing the transitional phase. That's the most dramatic AND the most interesting to me (and I'm sure a lot of people would want to read that).

My intention is to post once a week, probably on Saturdays. I have a 9-5 job as well as a small side job that I’m not leaving anytime soon.

Please engage on this journey with me. The world takes all kinds of people.

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