Capital and the Owners of Capital

We are as gods and we may as well get good at it.

-Stewart Brand, 1969

Can there be anything more dangerous than dissatisfied and irresponsible gods who don’t know what they want?

-Yuval Harari, 2011

The project to engineer human communication (and hence human ontology) in the direction of total ideality can be expected to require substantial capital. A stage-wise investment of $1B seems more or less appropriate to get a responsible pilot program (enlisting academics, Silicon Valley, Hollywood, grassroots venues and other strategic elements) underway.

The  return on such an investment should be something on the order of 1000x. The Universal Conversation Engine, once implemented on a significant scale and monetized, should dwarf the experiences of Microsoft, Apple, Google and Amazon. Attracting capital, once stages are designed and risks are understood, in principle seems easy.

The initial risk will be internal to the project, as interests among the participants begin to be set against one another. Internal interest risk is the key to getting the project off the ground.