Origin of Wealth

Throughout history automation, has been the single greatest driver of wealth. If you examine why society can afford singers, dancers, artists, reporters, firefighters, police, financiers, teachers, doctors, athletes, and cooks… it's because we no longer pick berries, hunt for food, and fight desperately for our lives. More and more of our daily needs are met automatically.

At some point in the past, someone created the wheel, which automated walking. They invented fire which automated digestion. They invented shelter which automated staying dry. They invented the aqueduct which automated access to water. The thousands of other technologies “they” invented allow people to do other things besides running after food and water, as they try to stay alive. Automation leads to time freedom, and because humans are inherently good and want to help each other, that time freedom leads society to a higher quality of life.

Automation makes whatever humans are working on, happen automatically. In doing so it frees their time to work on other things.

It took many generations of engineers, scientists, designers, and content creators to build the technologies we stand on today. Hardware had to automate the flow of electrons. Machine code had to automate the control of hardware. Compilers had to automate the conversion of programming languages to machine code. Scripting languages had to automate the work of compilers. All so we can build useful applications.

Apps can now help users automate ordering their food, automate calculating their taxes, automate revising a paper, automate controlling a robot, automate sharing a video, or even telling a story. Right now, this app has helped me automate telling the story of progress. (Which we have a responsibility to continue)

Making hard work happen automatically is hard. It takes a lot of energy, planning, architecture, design, engineering, and testing. But for the children of the world, it is the right thing to do. Building applications that automate things people do today, will create the time freedom required to allow the children of tomorrow to play and call it “work”.