Zuckerberg's Q&A Highlights

Last Tuesday, Facebook Inc FB’s creator, Mark Zuckerberg, conducted a Q&A session via his profile.

The young billionaire posted a photo of himself in an office, accompanied by an easily recognizable Apple Inc. AAPL MacBook and iPhone, plus some other tech gadgets. Above the picture, a text invited all of his followers to comment with their questions, which he would try to answer.

Below is a small collection of some of the most interesting questions and answers. Be advised, some of the participants might surprise you!

Happiness

One of the most popular questions was made by user Kirti Sharma:

Question: Hi Mark. What's your definition of happiness? And how has it evolved over a period of time as you grew up?

Answer: Great question. To me, happiness is doing something meaningful that helps people and that I believe in with people I love.

I think lots of people confuse happiness with fun. I don't believe it is possible to have fun every day. But I do believe it is possible to do something meaningful that helps people people every day.

As I've grown up, I've gained more appreciation for my close relationships – my wife, my partners at work, my close friends. Nobody builds something by themselves. Long term relationships are very important.

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Science

Then, the superstars came in. Stephen Hawking’s question (yes, that Stephen Hawking. He had a question for “Marky Mark,” too) was probably the most popular of them all:

Q: I would like to know a unified theory of gravity and the other forces. Which of the big questions in science would you like to know the answer to and why?

A: That's a pretty good one!

I'm most interested in questions about people. What will enable us to live forever? How do we cure all diseases? How does the brain work? How does learning work and how we can empower humans to learn a million times more?

I'm also curious about whether there is a fundamental mathematical law underlying human social relationships that governs the balance of who and what we all care about. I bet there is.

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Health

Another famous character that also wanted to be a part of the Q&A was Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Q: Mark, I always tell people that nobody is too busy to exercise, especially if Popes and Presidents find time. You've got to be one of the busiest guys on the planet, and younger generations can probably relate to you more than they can the Pope - so tell me how you find time to train and what is your regimen like?

And by the way - will the machines win?

A: Staying in shape is very important. Doing anything well requires energy, and you just have a lot more energy when you're fit.

I make sure I work out at least three times a week -- usually first thing when I wake up. I also try to take my dog running whenever I can, which has the added bonus of being hilarious because that basically like seeing a mop run.

And no, the machines don't win :)

Money

User Joe Byer asked:

Q: Why did you choose to set your salary at $1?>/em>

A: I've made enough money. At this point, I'm just focused on making sure I do the most possible good with what I have. The main way I can help is through Facebook -- giving people the power to share and connecting the world. I'm also focusing on my education and health philanthropy work outside of Facebook as well. Too many people die unnecessarily and don't get the opportunities they deserve. There are lots of things in the world that need to get fixed and I'm just lucky to have the chance to work on fixing some of them.

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The Future

Back to celebrities, Arianna Huffington had a question of her own:

Q: Facebook has played a huge role in the digital publishing industry over the past few years. Based on everything you've learned, how do you think the way journalists and news organizations present their stories online will evolve over the next few years? And what types of products are you focused on in this space?

A: I think there will be a couple of trends towards richness and speed / frequency.

On richness, we're seeing more and more rich content online. Instead of just text and photos, we're now seeing more and more videos. This will continue into the future and we'll see more immersive content like VR. For now though, making sure news organizations are delivering increasingly rich content is important and it's what people want.

On speed / frequency, traditional news is thoroughly vetted but this model has a hard time keeping us with important things happening constantly. There's an important place for news organizations that can deliver smaller bits of news faster and more frequently in pieces. This won't replace the longer and more researched work, and I'm not sure anyone has fully nailed this yet.

One of the best ones:

Q: how will you react if you woke up next morning and there is no facebook? [sic.]

A: I'd build it :)

And, to conclude, a look forward:

Q: Also in 10years time what's your view on the world where do you think we all will be from a technology perspective and social media? [sic.]

A: In 10 years, I hope we've improved a lot of how the world connects. We're doing a few big things:

First, we're working on spreading internet access around the world through Internet.org. This is the most basic tool people need to get the benefits of the internet -- jobs, education, communication, etc. Today, almost 2/3 of the world has no internet access. In the next 10 years, Internet.org has the potential to help connect hundreds of millions or billions of people who do not have access to the internet today.

As a side point, research has found that for every 10 people who gain access to the internet, about 1 person is raised out of poverty. So if we can connect the 4 billion people in the world who are unconnected, we can potentially raise 400 million people out of poverty. That's perhaps one of the greatest things we can do in the world.

Second, we're working on AI because we think more intelligent services will be much more useful for you to use. For example, if we had computers that could understand the meaning of the posts in News Feed and show you more things you're interested in, that would be pretty amazing. Similarly, if we could build computers that could understand what's in an image and could tell a blind person who otherwise couldn't see that image, that would be pretty amazing as well. This is all within our reach and I hope we can deliver it in the next 10 years.

Third, we're working on VR because I think it's the next major computing and communication platform after phones. In the future we'll probably still carry phones in our pockets, but I think we'll also have glasses on our faces that can help us out throughout the day and give us the ability to share our experiences with those we love in completely immersive and new ways that aren't possible today.

Those are just three of the things we're working on for the next 10 years. I'm pretty excited about the future :)

Image Credit: Public Domain