Towards a Literate Nation

“Give me a lever long enough, and a place to stand, and I will move the earth”

– Archimedes

To reduce unemployment, we need to lever up.

Not like Wall Street did, through debt, but like Silicon Valley does, with tools.

Leverage magnifies your actions and increases your productivity. You can get leverage through:

• labor (people work for you)
• capital (money works for you)
• tools (machines work for you)

We’re trying to help labor. We don’t have much capital. We must give tools to the people.

All of the great modern tools for productivity – the printing press, the factory, the movie studio – require capital and coordination to use. The computer is the first tool since maybe the stone axe, that an individual can use to gain massive leverage, without permission from anyone else.

The modern computer can help in every endeavor – even if you don’t use a computer at work, you’ll soon carry a $50 smartphone in your pocket. You’re banking online, learning online, communicating online. The computer, and now the smartphone, make everyone more productive.

This is why Silicon Valley doesn’t have enough people, when the rest of the nation doesn’t have enough jobs.

Now computers are simpler. More ubiquitous. Cheaper. More accessible.

And we can teach people how to use computers, through computers, using tools like ShowMe, CodeAcademy, Bloc, and so on.

Let’s create the world’s first, completely Digitally Literate Society. Not a nation of programmers (maybe someday) but a nation of people who are comfortable with the most powerful tool ever invented by mankind.

Let’s do it quickly – train them in three months from start to finish. And cheaply – for free.

We can create the program at Stanford, MIT, Berkeley, Harvard, etc. We can teach basic proficiency – use online applications like Google Apps, Search, DropBox, Email, Online Banking, Travel, Ordering supplies, etc. Some basic creation – create your own web-site. Research questions. Solve problems. Learn to learn.

Google, Amazon, and Apple will loan us the tablets. Companies will pay us to have people learn to use their apps. An app marketplace where companies pay society to educate society.

Apple, Square, DropBox, Twitter have created beautiful software interfaces. iPad and Android have made the hardware accessible. Today, it is not just cheap to build a company. It is cheap to re-build a person.

Let’s create the world’s first digitally literate society. The world’s most desirable workforce. If that won’t generate employment, nothing will.