Hi there 🙂
My name is Mario Gruber, and as the founder of this project I thought I’d summarize my interests and what I’m working on. My main focus is on the role of science and technology in solving problems, i.e. how to make things more efficient and life better for people. At the same time I look at how we as people have to change including political action.
First, I’m a science communicator. Over the past five years I have written and posted about thousands of scientific and technological breakthroughs on social media, reaching over a hundred million people. I also started and still manage the Ultimate Collection Project, which is one of the largest popular science content collections online.
Secondly, I’m doing a PhD at King’s College London where I focus on the nexus between radical innovations and society, e.g. acceptance theory for robot taxis.
Lastly, I started this project to share my views about what I think are the best and fastest ways to build a better world, or even a utopia.
Why Science Communication
I love science because I think to understand as much about the world as possible (from history to physics and psychology) makes life way more interesting and even more enjoyable. More importantly, I communicate science because it is the first step to building a better world. It makes the difference between six million starving children a year and well-nourished, vaccinated people that live great, long lives. The more people understand the value of science and reason, the better the world becomes.
My Research in Innovation
The reason I’m doing research in the innovation field is because, over time, I realized that economics alone, or founding a start-up, or going into politics, or educating people about science and technology was not the most effective way to contribute to changing the world. Innovation, on the other hand, is the combination of all necessary knowledge and actions to build a better world. Hence, finding out new, important things in the innovation field and sharing it with the world can have the absolutely biggest multiplier effects.
Specifically, I look at social acceptance of radical technologies, because I think here is the biggest potential to create value. We need to start with the technologies that can most contribute to making life better and then on unifying society and politics so that their potential can be unleashed.
Generation Utopia: This Project and Page
My research is still rather limited to the academic nitty-gritty. The most important factor in creating a utopia is societal change, which won’t happen through my papers alone. My research however forms a great base of knowledge. Over the years I have amassed somewhere north of a million words on all the different topics that relate to innovation (from science to politics, sociology, economics, even philosophy and psychology) and now I want to turn that into articles, videos and books.
My goal with this is to educate millions of people on the most valuable insights from my innovation research and share my personal thoughts. What I think makes my approach special is that I don’t just write about stuff that is already on Wikipedia or elsewhere in some form, but I like to go very deep and make connections that have not been made before. So all this talk of building a better world probably sounds cheesy, but this is my hobby and my passion pretty much 24/7. So just like you follow political analysts on what they have to say about politics or nutritionists on what to eat, I think you could enjoy my views on innovation and building a better world.
How I Got Here – A Little Timeline, If You Care
I didn’t just arrive at this point because I woke up one day an innovation fan, but figuratively speaking, walked North, East, South and West intellectually and found this place, innovation, to be the center.
Here’s a quick summary of my steps:
- Economics: At thirteen I thought that economics was the key to everything and that money could solve all problems, so I started trading stocks. My hope was to become rich and use my money to do something important. More recently, I also tried my hand at a start-up and became a marketing manager.
- Philosophy, religion: At 16 I went to Malaysia for a year where I learned about different cultures and religions. I thought maybe as long as people find their purpose in life they can be happy anyway. But not true, you can pray all you want and still not have enough to eat or get cancer without the proper medicine. Furthermore, I started realizing that believing in nonsense is not a great stepping stone to making life better. Starting with facts (real facts, yes they exist) is the way to go. The method to find out what’s true and make that knowledge useful as technology is science.
- Science and political activism: So I became really active in the science community (around age 19) and co-founded a science and humanist organization. I also became a board member of a European youth political organization and traveled a bit around Europe to debate current affairs. Despite skipping a year of High School and coming back to still score As, I realized schools were useless, teachers sucked and I learned way more just reading my own books. So I held a TedxTalk on education and wrote an education manifesto, but nobody cared.
- Connecting the dots: I went to a British university, hoping they’d do a better job. For the most part I just learned how to not do anything for months at a time except watch YouTube videos at double speed and read my own books. But I did really get to understand the value of research and how research is done and how to write papers myself. Being surrounded by some of the most high-profile innovation researchers in the world, I started to see how all the different dots connected in the innovation field.
- Personal: Apart from the above-mentioned interests I’m also a competitive power lifter – I deadlift about 250kg – and am interested in fitness and nutrition.
There’s one quote that probably best summarizes me as a person: “It’s functionally selfish and efficient to build a better world for everyone” – Jacque Fresco
Generation Utopia 