Libra's Been Forgotten. I Think She Announced Her 10-Year Plan. :)
Every new year of the last decade I have a personal challenge. My goal was to grow in new ways outside of my daily work on Facebook. These led me to learn Mandarin, an ai assistant code for my home, read more books, run more, Hunt and cook, and become more comfortable with public speaking.
When I started these challenges, my life was almost entirely about setting up the facebook website. (it was mostly a website at the time.) there is much to learn now. At Facebook, we're building a lot of different apps and technologies -- ranging from a new social platform to augmented and virtual reality -- and we're taking on a lot more social responsibility. And outside of Facebook I've now become a father and I love spending time with my family, working on our philanthropy and improving on the sports and hobbies I've taken up over the years. I'm glad I've had annual challenges over the last decade, it's time to do something different.
This will be a longer-lasting focus for a decade. I tried to think about what the world and my life would be in 2030, rather than going through years of challenges. So I can make sure I'm focused on these things. By then, if things go well, my daughter max will be in high school, we'll have the technology to feel really present with another human being wherever she is, and scientific research will help treat Enough disease to expand the average. Life expectancy of another 2.5 years. Here are some of the things I think will be important in the next decade:
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Generational change
When I started Facebook, one of the reasons I cared about giving people a voice was that I thought it would empower my generation -- that I had important things to say and I didn't listen enough. It wasn't just my generation that felt marginalized and needed more voices, and these tools have given power to many different groups in society. I'm happy that more people have a voice but it hasn't yet brought generational change that addresses the important issues I hope. I think that's going to happen in a decade.
Many important institutions in our society today are still not enough, from climate change to the runaway costs of education, housing and health care. But as more members of Generation Y and younger generations are able to vote, I expect that to start changing rapidly. By the end of this decade, more institutions will be led by Generation y, and I expect more sets of policies to deal with these issues with longer-term appearances.
Facebook is, in many ways, a Millennial company with problems of this generation. Chan and Zuckerberg attempt in the lifetime of our children, cure all diseases, prevent or manage and the needs of students to make more personal his primary education that will help our children's generation as very long-term efforts are focused on. Over the next decade, we are focusing on giving young entrepreneurs, scientists and leaders more funding and platforms to enable these changes.
A new dedicated social platform
The Internet has given us the superpower to connect with anyone, anywhere. It's incredibly empowering and it means our relationships and opportunities are no longer just confined to where we live. We are now part of a society with billions of people in it -- with all the dynamism, culture and economic opportunities.
But being part of such a large society creates its own challenges and draws us to intimacy. Growing up in a small city, it was easy to have a niche and purpose. But with billions of people, its unique role is harder to find. For the next decade, the most important social infrastructure will help us rebuild all sorts of small societies.
This is one of the areas of innovation that I'm most excited about. Our digital social environments will feel very different over the next 5 + years, re-emphasising special interactions and helping us build the small societies we all need.
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Decentralized opportunity
The fastest growth in the economy over the past decade has been in the technology sector. I hope that in the next decade technology will continue to create opportunity, but by enabling all other regions of the economy to use technology better and grow even faster.
The area we focus most on is helping small businesses. Over the course of our services, more than 140 million small businesses have reached customers -- mostly free. Today this takes the form of an entrepreneur setting an account on facebook, Instagram or WhatsApp, and then buying ads to either communicate for free with free people or get his message more broadly. Over the next decade, we hope to build the means of trading and payment. So we hope that every small business will have easy access to technology that only large companies previously had.
You can sell products through a showcase on Instagram, text customers via messenger or send money home instantly and at low cost to another country via WhatsApp -- that's going to go a long way to creating more opportunities around the world. At the end of the day, a strong and stable economy comes from people who have achieved broadly, and the best way to do that is to make small businesses effectively a tech company.
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Next computer platform
The technology platform of the 2010s was mobile phone. The platform of the previous 2000s was about the web, and the 1990s was desktop computing. Each computer platform is becoming more accessible and natural for us to interact. While we expect phones to still be our main devices for much of this decade, at some point in the 2020s, we will get augmented reality glasses that will redefine our relationship with technology.
Augmented and virtual reality is about delivering a sense of being -- the feeling that you're there with another human being or somewhere else. Instead of having devices that take us away from the people around us, the next platform will help us become more available to each other and help technology get out of the way. While some of the early devices may seem silly, I think they will be the most human and social technology platforms he has ever built.
The ability to be "here" everywhere will help us address some of today's biggest social problems -- such as ballooning housing cost and inequality of opportunity by geography. A lot of people today think they have to move to cities because that's where the business is. But many cities don't have enough housing, so the cost of housing is skyrocketing while the quality of life is low. Imagine that you can live anywhere you choose and have access to any business elsewhere. If we deliver what we're building, 2030. it has to be much closer to reality by the year.
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New forms of management
One of the biggest questions of the next decade: how should we manage the large digital societies enabled by the Internet? Platforms like Facebook have to make commercial products of the social values we all value -- between free expression and security, between privacy and law enforcement, or between creating open systems and data and access. It's a rare thing to always have a clear "right" answer, and in many cases it's just as important that decisions are taken in a way that feels legitimate for society. In that respect, I think private companies need to make such important decisions that touch on fundamental democratic values.
One way to address this is by regulation. As long as our government is seen as legitimate, the rules established in a democratic process can add more legitimacy and confidence than just the rules set by the firms. There are many areas I believe will help governments make clearer rules, including elections, harmful content, privacy and data portability. I have called for new regulations in these areas and over the next decade hopefully we will get clearer rules for the internet.
Another, and perhaps better, way to address this is to establish new ways for societies to govern themselves. The oversight board, where we set up an example of independent management. You'll soon be able to appeal content decisions you disagree with to an independent board that will make the final decision that something is not allowed. In this decade, I hope to use my position to build more community management and more institutions like this. If this is successful, it could be a model for other online communities in the future.
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We have a lot of work to do in this decade and a lot to help them happen. I hope your new year and New Year is off to a good start. Here's to a great 2020s
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