Anyone who has met Richard Boyd – tech entrepreneur and 3D pioneer – knows that Boyd is a visionary thinker. Now he has a new startup (Szl.IT) after having left a top virtual reality job at defense contractor Lockheed Martin.

And in a recent “manifesto,” Boyd makes clear his vision for a future in which we humans make technology serve us rather than the other way around.

Here, here!

“It is time to proclaim an end to the era of humans as servants of technology,” Boyd, a 3D pioneer and veteran of several triangle startups, wrote in “The SuperHuman Age Manifesto.”

“It is time that technology serves us. It is time to end the decade of social media exploitation of our information in order to serve up mostly untrue information to try and persuade us to buy things we don’t need. The things we make, shouldn’t rule us, but serve us. Our personal data should empower us personally, not empower Madison Avenue.”

In a Facebook post about Szl.IT (we write about its first big fundraising as well as more about Boyd’s background today), Boyd makes clear what his artificial intelligence firm intends:

“Szl was created by computer gaming industry pioneers to solve information age problems for humans who are tired of having to meet technology on its terms. Szl turns the tables and makes technology serve us, with a powerful neural net automation system that allows every Szl user to effortlessly filter the Internet and automatically retrieve everything of interest to them. Don’t just browse, search, friend and poke the Internet, Szl it!”

In April, he posted his manifesto. It’s riveting reading.

“The SuperHuman Age Manifesto”

“I find it helpful to remember that the graphical and widely available Internet is finally no longer a teenager (b.1993). As it sweeps through its twentieth year of existence and sheds the fading wounds of adolescence it begins to enter a period when its true and full powers become known,” Boyd explained.

“If the last century was about recorded images, video and the birth of the Internet, this is the century of simulation and intelligence amplification – a century where humans will finally harness the power of networked intelligence to attain superhuman capabilities.”

Wow. Superhuman. Makes you want to live longer in order to see this, eh?

Supermen and superwomen physically – or better-informed people enabled to make wiser and more informed decisions through better use of technology?

Boyd foresees people using technology to make better sense of the worldwide deluge of data in which we are now buried daily.

“We create more information every year than we have available storage,” he writes, yet …

“A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.”

Noting that humans “are awash in data. Information, news, advertisements, apps, videos, images,” he points out: “It is becoming increasingly difficult to sort and sift, to filter an increasingly crowded and confusing Internetworked data space. What should we pay attention to, and what can we safely ignore?”

Enter neural nets – and what Boyd has in mind at Szl.

The Sizzle Behind Szl.IT

“A new class of technologies are emerging from the ashes of the Artificial Intelligence Age called neural nets. Neural nets are the optimal method for solving the filtering problem of information deluge. Machines are great at many things. Humans, for the foreseeable future, are still better at others. Combining these two powerful computation systems, man and machine, gets you the best results. And it does it with very little effort from humans. Having these powerful systems serve us personally, instead of serving corporations, will usher in a new age and change our relationship with technology.”

Boyd and his co-founders talk about “szl” (useful) and “fzl” (discard) choices using Szl, which is now available for free and is in beta form.

“Technology should not be a barrier between us and the problems we are trying to solve,” Boyd writes.

“It should be an ally. Even a servant. What we want is to be better, know more, educate children, heal people, discover better ways to manage resources and society. We want better ideas. We want time. We want freedom. We want knowledge.”

Will Szl help deliver that?

If so, Boyd and Szl.IT (including chairman David Smith, another 3D pioneer) are sitting on a goldmine. Not just of money but of potential to help us all live better lives.

Check out the manifesto online.