One of the best things about tossing out an idea is the fervent hope that someone really smart (much smarter than me) is reading them, if only for casual fun. And maybe that will provoke a much more detailed and well-formed idea on their part, no matter how silly my idea is. That is one of the greatest joys in brainstorming- the ability to provoke extremely intelligent people to come up with revolutionary thoughts and ideas. The beauty of this process is that your ideas don’t necessarily have to have any detailed merit- just the germ of an idea that encourages others to come up with better ones.
I have kept this book short so that it’s easy to get the gist of the ideas fairly quickly. A vast majority of people have good imaginations and can extrapolate from core ideas very quickly. I wanted to put together something that could easily be read in an airplane or on a train commuting somewhere. I have however, included economic arguments as part of the discussion of the ideas. Almost everything nowadays depends on financial decisions. You can have the greatest idea in the world, but if there’s no clear path for commercial viability, it will probably die. On the other hand, even the most half-baked idea can survive as long as it can stoke the interest of the general public and people want to spend money on it…
I hope what happens is that people read this book and it provides a lot of fodder for young minds. I hope they sit around a bar have a few beers and have raucous discussions about the ideas I presented. Perhaps they will all be ridiculed. Or perhaps it will spark some follow up ideas that are really great.
Read, enjoy and discuss. I hope you have as much fun reading this as I had writing it.

The purpose of this book is to share a bunch of “crazy” ideas. There is no claim that any careful research is done. It is more like a brainstorming session where any idea that comes to mind is presented. That is why you get a wide range of topics , from dealing with cat litter to exploring space.
You may wonder what the value of this is. Maybe the ideas are all not worth much in practical terms. Or perhaps there are some gems and some real bad ones. What’s the sense in me writing about these ideas?
Actually, I was wondering the same thing for many years. I have thought about writing this book for a lot of years , and never went through with it until recently.
I think we all start out when we are young thinking we are going to change the world. Especially in university, when I was studying physics, I had constant discussions with my colleagues about revolutionary ideas. As you get older, you settle down to a regular life that for the most part involves paying bills with the money you earn. Most of our energies start getting devoted to survival. Before you know it , you are wondering about managing retirement and you are left with a sense that somehow life passed you by.
The reason for this transformation from a wild eyed youngster with grand ideas to a well settled mortgage paying robot is fairly plain- most of us are just struggling to get by in life. Few of us have the luxury of picking and choosing what we do for a living. My own entry into the IT field was due to the inability of finding any physics related employment after doing a Ph.D. The job market was poor, and I looked around for a marketable job. I have done fairly well in my chosen profession, but I am constantly haunted by the thought that I was meant for something else. I suspect I have a lot of company in this regard.
It seems to me our sense of intellectual courage also wanes with age and seniority. We may have ideas that we think are worthwhile, but we dismiss them for the usual reasons:

• People will think they are stupid (a perennial favorite).
• I bet someone has thought of it already (yes, but they might not have voiced it ).
• I want to stick to the safe stuff that’s in the realm of my expertise.

It all becomes a tedious cycle. We end up doing something by rote, or maybe finding just a few ideas in our chosen profession that are interesting, and being content to live out our lives without a sense of wonder or exploration.
So this book is my attempt to revive a sense of wonder and speculation.

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