Knowledge Is Money — The IQ Jackpot Story

Throughout history, rare individuals have stood out for their meteoric contributions to a field. Lady Murasaki for her literary inventiveness. Michelangelo for his masterful touch. Marie Curie for her scientific acuity. "The genius," wrote German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, "lights on his age like a comet into the paths of the planets." Consider Einstein's impact on physics. With no tools at his disposal other than the force of his own thoughts, he predicted in his general theory of relativity that massive accelerating objects — like black holes orbiting each other — would create ripples in the fabric of space-time. It took 100 years, enormous computational power, and massively sophisticated technology to definitively prove him right, with the physical detection of such gravitational waves less than four years ago. 

Are geniuses born or made? To answer this question, Scott Barry Kaufman, scientific director of the Imagination Institute in Philadelphia, has been bringing together individuals who stand out as trailblazers in their fields — people like psychologist Steven Pinker and comedian Anne Libera of the Second City — to talk about how their ideas and insights are kindled. These discussions have revealed that the aha moment — the flash of clarity that unexpectedly arises in a dream, in the shower, or on a walk — often emerges after a period of contemplation. In other words, knowledge in the form of facts comes in consciously, but the problem is processed unconsciously, the resulting solution leaping out when the mind least expects it. The results of this work appeared to show that geniuses are made rather than born.

In 1991, while expecting our first child, I read a pile of books about how to raise smart kids. One of these books was Glenn Doman's “How to Give Your Baby Encyclopedic Knowledge”. Doman was the head of the Institutes for the Achievement of Human Potential in Pennsylvania. Over the years, Doman developed a famous Method to improve the IQs of brain-injured children. He later successfully applied the Method to increase the IQs of healthy children.

Doman's book described how a baby’s reading and math skills — and eventually the baby’s intelligence — were all facilitated by the knowledge and appreciation of everyday facts. The Method was to feed the baby lots of facts, arranged by category. The baby’s brain would then unconsciously figure out the laws and relationships governing these facts — resulting in a higher IQ.

I quickly discovered however that the Method was expensive and complicated to apply. So, as a computer engineer, I naturally started to look for ways to computerize the Method.

Using 1992 technology, the solution involved a large touch-sensitive tablet, a paper overlay printed with an array of pictures and a CD containing short videos about each picture. For example, one of the overlays included pictures of all the letters in the alphabet. When a baby touched a picture of the letter “A”, the tablet beamed the coordinates of the touch to the computer via infrared, like a TV remote. The computer responded by playing a Sesame Street video about the letter “A”. I filed several patents for this new invention, which is now called AirPlay and was made famous by Apple.

I soon realized however that, although a baby could easily touch a picture, the baby was not able to start the associated CD because this involved typing complicated commands. The CD needed to start automatically when it was inserted into the drive. This way, a baby would simply place a paper category overlay on the touch pad and insert an associated category CD into the drive.

The solution was for the computer's operating system to detect the insertion of a CD into the CD drive. When a CD was inserted, the operating system looked for a special file on the CD that included instructions about what program on the CD tostart. Voi

I filed several patents for this new invention, which is now called AutoPlay and was made famous by Microsoft Windows.

Over the following twenty years I licensed the AirPlay and AutoPlay patents to virtually every hardware, software, consumer electronics and toy company in the world. AirPlay and AutoPlay ended up in Blu Ray players, in video game consoles, in Microsoft Windows, in the LeapPad, in Apple TV and even in the iPhone.

Eventually CDs were replaced by the Internet, but I continued to think about the Method. I now wanted to use the Method to give babies access to the vast knowledge available on the Internet.

The first half of the solution involved squeezing all of the knowledge available on the Internet into an animated 3D cube. Sides of this rotating cube showed images representing knowledge categories and subcategories. Any number of categories and subcategories could be accommodated by the cube — making the entire world of knowledge easily accessible even to two-year olds! 

The second part of the solution was to use the cube in a live trivia game that teaches players encyclopedic knowledge and rewards their knowledge with cash prizes. No kidding! You end-up with encyclopedic knowledge and extra money in your pocket. And, as if this were not enough, the whole process is fun and even addictive. The game is called IQ Jackpot. 

Before competing for a cash prize, you can practice encyclopedic knowledge by rolling the cube vertically through knowledge categories, such as "ASTRONOMY" and “DOG BREEDS”. After stopping on the “DOG BREEDS” category, you can turn the cube horizontally through knowledge subcategories, such as "German Shepherd”, "Great Dane" and "Chihuahua". For each subcategory, the cube displays an associated image. 

Eventually you will want to test your encyclopedic knowledge by participating in a live competition with other players. A new live game show plays every hour on the hour. No purchase is necessary to play. When you correctly identify 20 multiple choice image captions, you get to share the jackpot and cash out with PayPal. The iPhone and Android app can be downloaded from iqjackpot.com.

Conclusion

Is a genius born or made?  We’ll let the social scientists bicker over this age-old question. However, what is certain is that with enough dedicated practice, there is no question that a person can increase their knowledge. What’s more, with enough knowledge there is nothing stopping said person from winning the IQ Jackpot Live Trivia Game and reap the cash rewards! Put your IQ to the test and reap the profits of your hard-earned knowledge with IQ Jackpot - live trivia game.

Write to Peter Redford at [email protected]

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Peter Redford is a veteran Silicon Valley technology CEO and Xerox PARC alumnus. Redford’s 44 patents are licensed by most of the world’s top computer, consumer-electronics, and media companies.

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