Since everyone's doing it, I figured I'd do a proper introduction.

https://s20.postimg.org/cou7mgnz1/hi_steemit_federico_pistono.jpg

I graduated in Computer Science at the University of Verona, and later at Singularity University, NASA Ames Research Park. I wrote for **Forbes, New Scientist, CNBC, Wired**, and my work has been covered by **The Economist, the European Commission, The Huffington Post, MIT Technology Review**, and many others.

https://s20.postimg.org/5hmbh1ie5/federico_pistono_singularity.jpg

# My life and Steemit
I discovered Steemit about two months ago, read the white paper, and immediately saw the potential. I [posted my book for free on Steemit](https://steemit.com/books/@federicopistono/hi-steem-community-i-am-the-author-of-robots-will-steal-your-job-but-thats) and tweeted about it. That caught the attention of Max Keiser, which I thought was pretty cool (he retweeted it to his 150K followers).

https://s20.postimg.org/yhlbarqe5/fp_tweet.jpg

But I'm getting ahead of myself, let me take a step back :)

# Some background
For the past 12 years or so I co-founded several activist, human rights groups, social movements, non-profits, open source projects and social impact companies. 

**Five years ago I decided quit my job** as a web developer/sysadmin/videomaker. I wanted to follow my own path and **turn my passions and interests**, which I was pursuing at night and weekend, **into what I do for a living**.

As you can imagine, **this was not an easy decision**, one that in fact attracted the bafflement and in some cases the anger of friends and people who knew me. To give some context, it was 2011, I had a stable and good paying job with essentially the equivalent of tenure, in a period that is considered one of the worst economic crisis in Italy, where **youth unemployment was as high as 45%**.

Anyway, I wasn't looking for security. I was looking for excitement and for making a change in the world. Well, at least trying.

After years of work and research I published my book ["Robots Will Steal Your Job, But That's OK: How to Survive the Economic Collapse and Be Happy"](http://robotswillstealyourjob.com).

https://s20.postimg.org/omz81nsrh/Robots_Will_Steal_03.jpg
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Practically everyone I talked to told me that I would have never made it. They said I'd never find a publisher. And even if I did, they would pay me little to nothing. Well they were right. The offers I received were ridiculous, almost an insult.

If instead I decided to self-publish, the common wisdom was that it would end up nowhere. When I looked at the numbers coming out of 99% of first-time authors, I concluded that they were probably right again. My chances of being successful very slim-to-none.

To me, the deciding factor was another.

## I didn't do it to "be successful". I did it because I had a message I wanted to get out to the world. I had story to tell  that I thought was important.

So, without any consideration for financial stability, I went on and self-published my book, against all odds.

## If Steemit had been around at that time...

Anyway, to my amazement, the book was an international success. It was a best-seller on Amazon for a few weeks, and it's [now published in Korean, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Italian, English, Complex and Simplified Chinese](http://robotswillstealyourjob.com).

https://s20.postimg.org/opj3ohwf1/robots_book_many_languages_1000px.jpg

https://s20.postimg.org/si2m48bx9/robots_will_steal_your_job_endorsements.jpg
*Top-left to bottom-right: Nigel Ackland (first Human Cyborg), Jason Silva (Shot of Awe), Exponential Finance in New York (one of the leading crypto-conferences), Tony Robbins (leading motivational speaker), Howard Bloom (microbiologist and best-selling author), Avi Reichental (CEo of 3D Systems, world's top 3D printing company), Devin Fidler (research director at the  Institute For The Future), Mike Butcher (Chief Editor At TechCrunch)*

The book got me *a full scholarship for Singularity University at the NASA Ames Research Park*, where I met legends such as Peter Diamandis, Ray Kurzweil, cryptography pioneer Ralph Merkle, SciFi author Vernor Vinge, co-founder of WIRED magazine Kevin Kelly, and co-founder of Sun Microsystems and mega-billionaire Vinod Khosla, among many others.

https://s20.postimg.org/eryfkkt3x/Federico_Pistono_Peter_Diamandis.jpg
*Me with Peter Diamandis, founder and chairman of the X Prize Foundation, co-founder of Zero Gravity, Space Adventures, International Space University, Planetary Resources, Human Longevity, and a bunch of other incredible companies. You can see him on the right floating in zero-gravity with James Cameron and **real-life Tony Stark Elon Musk**. He told me he's secretly more proud of the picture on the left. [1]*


https://s20.postimg.org/70hpm0oyl/Federico_Pistono_Ray_Kurzweil.jpg
*With Ray Kurzweil, Director of Engineering at Google and inventor of the first charge-coupled device flatbed scanner, the first omni-font optical character recognition, the first print-to-speech reading machine for the blind, the first commercial text-to-speech synthesizer, the Kurzweil K250 music synthesizer capable of simulating the sound of the grand piano and other orchestral instruments, and the first commercially marketed large-vocabulary speech recognition.*

Then *things went insane*. **The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, the BBC, The Financial Times, Vice Magazine, CNBC, Forbes**, *even freaking Japanese Magazines* covered it. I could hardly believe it.

https://s20.postimg.org/u66cwmf6l/CNBC_article_2.png
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https://s20.postimg.org/vz99ky0d9/Huff_Post_Live_A_Future_of_Unemployment.png
https://s20.postimg.org/ulhmpn13x/Russia_Today_Interview_by_Abby_Martin.jpg
https://s20.postimg.org/nefxtrq71/Brutus_magazine_Japan_Futurist_detail.png

I went on lecturing on AI, automation, existential risks, the Future of Work, and the need for a new socio-economic system [at universities and conferences in more than 20 countries](http://federicopistono.org/speaking), including **the European Commission, the Italian Chamber of Deputies, Google EU Public Policy, The Nobel Peace Prize center, The Institute for the Future, and The University of Oslo**.


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# Social Impact, Addressing Humanity's Grand Challenges
I've always had a thing for trying to solve big problems, but things really took off recently. For the past year and a half I've been involved with the XPRIZE, a non-profit organization to bring about “**radical breakthroughs for the benefit of humanity**” through incentivized competition.

### Basically we find things that are terribly wrong with the world and that could be solved with breakthrough technologies, we raise $10-20 million dollars for a prize and give the money to whoever can prove they can fix the problem.

So far the XPRIZE raised over $100 million for  Suborbital Spaceflight, Oil Spills Cleanup, a Lunar Lander, 3D Mapping for restoring the health of our Oceans, the Star Trek Medical Tricorder, educating 800 million illiterate kids with AI, and so on.

It's pretty f*****g awesome.

The Board of Trustees includes *Elon Musk, James Cameron, Larry Page, Arianna Huffington, Ratan Tata* and other cool people.

https://s20.postimg.org/jdz56o40t/visioneering_0.jpg
*I'm a fan of decentralization. Can't help but bringing it up any time I have the chance.*

I spoke at their last VISIONEERING conference on the topic "Future of Work", and I had the pleasure of working with Google X co-founders and directors Astro teller and Tom Chi.

https://s20.postimg.org/pg6rx5sgt/visioneering_1.jpg
*Director of Google X Atro Teller (center-right, with he goatee). Just the place where they created Google Glass, the Google driverless cars, Google Contact Lens, and Project Loon.*

The project I presented with Tom came second place.

https://s20.postimg.org/bp2auy3j1/visioneering_3.jpg
*Tom is also pretty badass. He's the original creator of the prototype of Google Glass and a pioneer of the concept of rapid prototyping. He's also one of the smartest people I've ever met.*

# Crypto&Me, love at first sight
I've been involved with the crypto community since early 2011, more than five years now. When the first US Bitcoin physical stock exchange opened (Satoshi Square, NYC, in front of Wall Street), I was there.

https://s20.postimg.org/fu7dflyl9/reason_tv_bitcoin.jpg
*Reason.tv covered the event, they caught me while scripting some stuff. This was just before Mt. Gox collapsed. Ah, good times!*

https://s20.postimg.org/ku4tnk47x/satoshi_square_screen.jpg
*That's my computer on screen, running _by hand_ the physical crypto exchanges on a Vim terminal. Ah, the good times!!! :D*

# Reddit and Steemit
I'm an active contributor at reddit (I did two AMAs), one of which is the [second-most upvoted of all-time in /r/Futurology](https://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/2bmnt0/i_am_federico_pistono_author_of_robots_will_steal/), a community of 7 million futurists.

https://s20.postimg.org/vxuqds95p/ama_reddit.jpg

## I'm looking forward to seeing the growing community on Steemit develop a Futurology section, maybe I'll do an AMA here too!

Recently I published a paper with Prof. Yampolskiy on "How to create a Malevolent Artificial intelligence", which was covered by many publications, including MIT Technology Review and the World Economic Forum.

https://s20.postimg.org/thswzxr31/MAI_WEF.jpg
https://s20.postimg.org/4d1wmirml/mit_tech_review.png

This was also **the [first-ever scientific publication entirely published on Steemit](https://steemit.com/scientific-research/@federicopistono/i-am-federico-pistono-ai-researcher)**.

All my works under a CC-BY-NC-SA license. Sharing is caring.

I spend a lot of time time studying and researching, and I'm curious to see where Steemit might be headed. I wrote [some of my thoughts on that here](https://steemit.com/steemit/@federicopistono/thoughts-on-the-future-of-steem-and-its-success-of-downfall-by-federico-pistono-best-selling-author).

# The #SteemTubeExperiment 
I have an ongoing experiment where I post my YouTube videos on Steem ( #SteemTubeExperiment ), record the results and feedback, will document the process and challenges I find as a creator on Steemit. *If my experience on Steemit is positive, I will tell other YouTubers about it, including the [450+ Superstar YouTubers in the community I manage](https://konoz.io/)*.

## Thanks for the warm welcome so far, I'm super-excited to (perhaps) be part of the future of online creations together with you!

Live long and prosper.

\ \\/ /,


#### Notes
[1] No he didn't. Come on.