I'd like to thank you for leaving crazy person out of the description. I was trying to think what is the most useful thing that I could--what could I say that could actually be helpful or useful to you in the future? I thought I'd perhaps tell a story of how I came to be here. How did some of these things happen and maybe there's some lessons there because I often find myself wondering how did this happen? So when I was young, I didn't really know what I was going to do when I got older. People kept asking me and--but then eventually I thought that the idea of inventing things would be really cool.
And the reason I thought that was because I read a quote from Arthur C. Clarke which said that a sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. And that's really true. If you go back, say, 300 years, the things that we take for granted（授予） today would be--you'd be burned at the stake（树桩） for, you know, being able to fly--that's crazy--being able to see over long distances, being able to communicate, having effectively with the internet a group mind of sorts, and having access to all the world's information instantly（立即） from almost anywhere on the earth. This is stuff that really would be magic, would be considered magic in times past. In fact, I think it actually goes beyond（在…的那边） that because there are many things that we take for granted（授予） today that weren't even imagined in times past.
They weren't even in the realm（领域） of magic. So it actually goes beyond that. And so I thought, well, if I can do some of those things, basically（基本上） if I can advance（前进） technology, then that's like magic and that would be really cool. And I always had sort of a slight（轻微的） existential crisis（危机） because I was trying to figure（ 认为） out what does it all mean? Like what's the purpose of things? And I came to the conclusion that if we can advance the knowledge of the world, if we can do things that expand the scope（范围） and scale（衡量） of consciousness（意识）, then we're better able to ask the right questions and become more enlightened and that's really the only way forward.
So I studied physics and business because I figured in order to do a lot of these things, you need to know how the universe（ 宇宙） works（使工作） and you need to know how the economy works（使工作）. And you also need to bring a lot of people together to work with you to create something because it's very difficult to do something as an individual if it's a significant（重大的） technology. So I originally came out to California（加利福尼亚） to try to figure（ 认为） out how to improve the energy density（密度） of electric vehicles, basically to try to figure out if there was an advanced capacitor（[电] 电容器） that could serve as an alternative to batteries. And that was in '95 and that's also when the internet started to happen. And I thought, well, I can either pursue（继续） this technology where success may not be one of the possible outcomes（结果）, which is always tricky（ 狡猾的）, or participate in the internet and be part of it. So I decided to drop out.
Now, unfortunately, we're past graduation so I can't be accused（控告） of recommending that to you. And so I did some internet stuff, did a few things here and there, one of which was PayPal. And I think maybe it's helpful to say one of the things that was important in the creation（创造） of PayPal was kind of how it started because initially（最初） the initial（最初的） thought with PayPal was to create an agglomeration of financial services so if you have one place where all your financial services needs would be seamlessly integrated and work（使工作） smoothly. And then we had a little feature which was to do email payments. And whenever we'd show the system off to someone, we'd show the hard part, which was the agglomeration of financial services, which was quite difficult to put together. Nobody was interested.
Then we'd show people email payments, which was actually quite easy, and everybody was interested. So I think it's important to take feedback（[无]回授） from your environment. You want to be as closed-loop（环） as possible. And so we focused on email payments and really tried to make（使） that work, and that's what really got things to take off. But if we hadn't responded to what people said, then we probably would not have been successful. So it's important to look for things like that and focus on them when you see them and correct your prior（在先的） assumptions（假定）.
And then going from PayPal, I thought, well, what are some of the other problems that are likely to most affect the future of humanity（人性）?