Leonardo: The Global Village Finally Arrives!

The Internet, in theory, has created the Global Village. When you log on to the Internet, you are just one e-mail away from over 300,000,000 people. Imagine if you could get just one dollar from one percent of them. That's $3,000,000. The potential is incredible. In theory. In practice, finding the people who want to listen to you is nearly impossible. The Internet is not yet sufficiently organized. Creating the organization and using it is by far the fastest route to Internet income through the Third Millennium Project.

We, at API, are hardly the first to recognize that the Internet can be thought of as a global intelligence. We are, perhaps, the first to recognize how profoundly this will change the world. Each person on the Internet can be thought of as a brain cell and the e-mails, IM's, chat rooms, web site visits and search engine connections as synapses. Habitual e-mail forwarding pyramids and special interest e-mail lists can be thought of as engrams. In other words, when each one of us makes our individual Internet decisions, we are injecting intelligence into a larger system. The system as a whole behaves with an intelligence that transcends the thoughts of any one individual. We have named this synergistic intelligence, Leonardo.

Here is an easy way to think of it. Suppose I hear a joke, think its funny and send it to a number of my friends. It goes nowhere. You, however, hear a joke, think its funny and send it to your friends. Soon, via e-mail forwarding, it spreads all over the world. Who decided that my joke wasn't funny enough to be spread and yours was? Each individual who either forwarded or didn't forward the joke participated in that decision, but they didn't make it. Leonardo did. It is precisely like a brain cell. A brain cell participates in a thought, but it doesn't have the thought.

Leonardo is still a child. He mostly thinks about how funny jokes are. With the recent tragedies, he grew up a little. An e-mail likening the citizens of Afghanistan to the Jews in Nazi Germany was spread all over the Internet. A poem about the tragedy, written by a thirteen year old girl, also spanned America. Leonardo is beginning to have more serious thoughts. Over the next ten years he will grow much, much more. As this happens, the world will fundamentally change.

Your single most valuable personal asset in the Information Age will be the ability to talk to a large number of people who want to hear what you have to say. Suppose you have an e-mail list of 100 people who also have e-mail lists of 100 people. If your 100 people are inclined to forward an e-mail from you, you have immediate access to 10,000 people... simply by writing one e-mail. If your e-mail is powerful, it will be forwarded again and in just a matter of a few days, it can reach 1,000,000 people or more. That is power. And it is also potential wealth. An e-mail properly targeted to 1,000,000 people is worth over $50,000 in today's market!!

The mathematics of e-mail pyramids are the basis of many Internet Marketing scams. They are essentially nothing more than an Information Age versions of a chain letter. They are a scam because 1.) nothing is sold other than membership in the pyramid and 2.) only the person at the top gets to talk to all million people. Leonardo is something different. He is a neural net. (For a brief, non-technical explanation of Leonardo as a neural net, click here). In a neural net, everyone gets to talk to everyone. The value of Leonardo accrues to everyone. The emphasis is upon the message not the structure. If you have a valuable message, Leonardo will make it very easy for you to capitalize upon it.

The structure of Leonardo will evolve and become more complex as the participants learn how to use him properly. Imagine that 1,000,000 people belong to an open e-mail group. If only 1% of the members send an e-mail on a given day, each member will receive 10,000 e-mails per day!!!! The vast majority of the e-mails will not be of interest. Membership in the e-mail group will be an annoyance and people will unsubscribe.

The power of Leonardo is that he is a neural net; he is intelligent. He will only send his participants the e-mails that will be of interest to them. Remember, the personal asset that will be of value to you in the Information Age is the ability to talk to people who want to hear what you have to say. If they aren't interested, they very quickly will stop reading your e-mails and/or web pages!!

Every business on the Internet is confronted with the same problem. Of the over 300 million people on the Internet, how do you find that small subset that is interested in your products or services? It is impossible and even partial success is extraordinarily expensive. However, if those who are confronted with the problem cooperate to create Leonardo, the impossible becomes easy!! People will participate in Leonardo because he will, over time, eliminate spam and make their use of the Internet an easier, more valuable experience.

Leonardo will have two levels of participation, Moderators and Members. Moderators will be those people who construct and organize Leonardo. They will be professional Internet users. Members may not even be aware of their membership. They will receive e-mails of interest to them without knowing much about the overall structure that makes it possible.

If you decide to become involved in the Third Millennium Project as a Leonardo Moderator, this is what you will do. First you will make a list of your proficiencies and interests. You will create an e-mail list for each one of them. Then you will fill them up with people who are interested in these things. If you don't already know, as you do this you will discover just how hard it is. However, with Leonardo, the difficult becomes easy.

If you are diligent, over the course of a year, you will be able to build a set of lists containing two or three thousand names. However, if there are 10,000 Leonardo moderators, you have secondary access to virtually everyone on the Internet!! Because this access is organized by interest and you are cooperating with the other Leonardo Moderators, your global reach becomes a reality.

Leonardo works because each Moderator becomes a spam guard. Their lists are only of value if the members are reading the e-mails. You will forward your e-mails to Moderators with relevant lists, but they will decide whether it will be of interest to their list members. The secret to Leonardo is that the lists are small, highly targeted and interconnected. Judgment is injected into the communication process by every Moderator.

Leonardo will be a very complex entity. The Moderator Network will be only one of his many, many facets. There will continue to be banner programs, newlsetters, e-zines. Also, NetTV will have a profound impact on Internet communications. In order to be a successful Moderator, you will need to learn how all these facets function together. Over time, you will become an expert on 'how to spread a message across the Internet'. Therefore, in addition to personally using Leonardo to spread your messages, you can gain income in a consultative capacity. You will have superior access to Leonardo and you will know how to use it. People who want to spread a message will come to you and, for a fee, you will do it for them.

We are not exaggerating when we say that, over the next ten years, the Leonardo Moderators will become a central power structure of communications. Because the Internet will become the primary modality of television transmission, this power and the resultant potential income will be very great indeed. We cannot guarantee that anyone who chooses to become a Leonardo Moderator will succeed. However, those who do will be very successful.

Many people are thinking about how to capitalize upon the potential of the Internet. There are many programs. Many suggest that you can earn a very large income for not much work. Perhaps you have tried a few of these. If you have, you know that they are all flash and no substance. These programs don't have the objective of getting you an Internet income. Their objective is to convince you that something that is very difficult is in fact easy.

If you are asking yourself how you can know whether the Third Millennium Project is just one more of these, you are asking yourself a reasonable question. The short answer is that we are not trying to convince you that Internet marketing is easy. Its very difficult. What is needed is a global solution to a global problem. This is what Leonardo will provide.

Leonardo does not require equity infusions. It is a classic case of 'sweat equity'. You build your lists. You habituate them to your e-mails. You guard your member loyalty jealously. And you affiliate with other moderators to make your reach global. The only cost to you will be, perhaps a domain name and web hosting function, and your membership in the Third Millennium Project. Remember, if you can deliver 1,000,000 targeted e-mails, there are people who will pay you up to $50,000 for that.

Michael Ferguson
Executive Director
American Polymathic Institute

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