Turning Data into Meaning
Esther Dyson1/18/12Leave a CommentFollow @edyson
More than anything, they should be studying math, including statistics and probability, and programming. No matter what the subject, we will have huge amounts of data about it, and will need these tools to get meaning from the data. The areas I’m thinking of include medicine, genetics, nutrition, and neuroscience; human behavior; energy management and consumption; materials science (so that we can use our personal 3D printers more effectively); aerospace and cosmology (so we can find asteroids, whether to deflect them from an earth-bound path, to mine them of valuable minerals or terraform them for human habitation); and of course biology, so that we can enjoy the company of animals, grow food, and ultimately create human-friendly living conditions on other planets and asteroids. It would also be great to get better at modeling and managing economic fluctuations!
But in the meantime, don’t forget to read world literature so you can understand your place in history and know how to be a human being.
Esther Dyson is an angel investor, focusing on the Internet, commercial space and health, mostly in the US and emerging markets.
