That was the millennium birth-decade that was.. (breaking 2009 after 52 year gap Dr Li and Stanford renew V Neumann's Last Gift to Intelligence)

 Viewing earth from the North West: It is easy to feel scared or sad about how technology has exponentially accelerated through this decade but humanity in the West appears to have been frozen. The entrepreneurial creativity of dotcom era vanished as quickly as millennium celebrations: 9/11 started a decade of wars creating masses of refugees as nations failed and borders collapsed; mischief in wall street subprimed the world's finances- all of these errors of elders falling on youth to pick up the debt just when good tech investments needed ever deeper collaboration as 4G brings another wave of 100 times more data beamed around earth to 3G at start of 2000s and 2G near birth of worldwide web

but 2009 was also the year that a campus, Stanford, chose to let a 20 something fmelae researcher sdtart an 8 year computer training project- the first totally aligned with Von neumann's final notes 1957 "Computer & The Brain". Watcvh out for whomever Fei-Fei Li connects in annual summits training computers to see the 20000 idmentitiesd children grow up seeing - be tehse natire'sd or man made tools that shape lives and livelihoods of all earthlings. There is also a rumor that one of the first visitiors to Fei-fei Li in stanfird was another new doctirate over from London sponsored by Sainsbury's Gatsby Scholarships. Can games train computers to see the basic building bloks of anture's science (2019 udpate yes deep mind can open source 200 milliuon proteins codes offering the greatest biotech leap0

 Actually if you study what happened during 200s within 20 miles of Stanfird, there's space for a lot of hope. Foir example hugely moving was Steve Jobs hosting Silicon Valeeys 65th biorthday partry with Fazle Abed to understand how 1 billion vilage mothers intelligence redeveloped tropical asia establishing foundations for community health and education services as well as ending sdtarvation. Back in 1972 when Abed transformed his last 50 years of life as servant of women ending extreme poverty (from his previous jonb regiional ceo shell oil) at least 2% of mother were dying each yera of starvation and in humid rural regions without electricity up to a third of infants died of dehydration. Very detailed local intelligenced needed to be networked by village mothers to turn this round for youth at the bootom of the Asian Pyramid.