If I Won the Lottery...

Sooner or later someone asks you what you would do if you won the lottery. Some people talk about houses, cars and boats - all things that just... sit there.

My answer would be to spend the rest of my life learning and experimenting. The logical progression is wondering what I would be learning and experimenting for the rest of my life.

The easy answer is, 'everything'. And the joy in this day and age is that you don't have to win the lottery to do that, though to do it full time you would have to.

All of that said, if I had to pick things I would study, such as what is served up at a University's menu, I'd pick all of the following:

• Physics: I've always loved Physics. On my bookshelves lurk copies of Sir Isaac Newton's Principia and Opticks. I've read and understood Feynman and Einstein, though that sort of understanding only increases in depth over time.
• NeuroAnything: Neuroscience. Neuropsychology. Neurotics. You get the idea. People don't realize it, but that's where the next big things in our world will come from.
• Optical Engineering: Kind of Physics, but playing with light doesn't have to all be experimental.

Best of all, I'd probably just stay home and order books, correspond with authors/professors, travel around (bump into professors) and learn it without paying tuition. Degrees are basically things you can trade in for jobs - and all too often people do trade them in.

The truth is that I'd probably just bumble around, read and write, hack solutions. Sort of what I do now, only with a budget...