Category Archives: Inspiration

Better Than Human: Why Robots Will — And Must — Take Our Jobs

Better Than Human: Why Robots Will — And Must — Take Our Jobs. A great piece by Kevin Kelly.

How Robots will take over our jobs

How Robots will take over our jobs

This is not a race against the machines. If we race against them, we lose. This is a race with the machines. You’ll be paid in the future based on how well you work with robots. Ninety percent of your coworkers will be unseen machines. Most of what you do will not be possible without them. And there will be a blurry line between what you do and what they do. You might no longer think of it as a job, at least at first, because anything that seems like drudgery will be done by robots.

We need to let robots take over. They will do jobs we have been doing, and do them much better than we can. They will do jobs we can’t do at all. They will do jobs we never imagined even needed to be done. And they will help us discover new jobs for ourselves, new tasks that expand who we are. They will let us focus on becoming more human than we were.

Let the robots take the jobs, and let them help us dream up new work that matters.

My Favorite TEDxUtrecht talks

Two weeks a go I was invited at the first TEDxUtrecht. And I would like to share four great talks that I find worth watching.

TEDx

TEDx is one of the creations for TED’s mission, “ideas worth spreading,”, TED.com, where you can find dozens of jaw-dropping, persuasive, ingenious, inspiring and funny talks, is probably the best creation of TED. TEDx is a local , self-organized event that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. At a TEDx event, TEDTalks video and live speakers combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. These local, self-organized events are branded TEDx, where x = independently organized TED event. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events are self-organized.

In that spirit of TED’s mission I share 4 of my favorite talks at TEDxUtrecht.

Reint Jan Renes — Behavior Change – On TouchPoints And Crossroads

Stephen Anderson — From Information to Understanding: Solving the Small Data Problems

Todd Kashdan — Becoming a Mad Scientist with Your Life

Brendan Dawes — Data by itself is not enough, data needs poetry

Others that are also worth watching: Dolf Jansen, Andrei Herasimchuk, Ann Mehl and of course all other TEDxUtrecht speakers.

Ray Kurzweil on Artificial Intelligence, Nanotechnology and More

Ray Kurzweil on Artificial Intelligence, Nanotechnology and More

A nice interview with Ray Kurzweil about Singularity and what we can expect till 2029 at The Wall Street Journal’s CFO conference.

This computer is thousands of times more powerful than the computer I used as a student, and it’s 100,000 times smaller. In 25 years, it will be a billion times more powerful in price performance, a billion times more powerful per dollar, and 100,000 times smaller.

It’ll be the size of a blood cell. They’ll be going through our body and keeping us healthy from the inside.

Not as futuristic as it sounds. People have already been doing that in animal models. There are people walking around with computers attached to their brains, like Parkinson’s patients, the latest generation of which allows you to download new software to the computer that’s connected into your brain from outside the patient. Right now that requires surgery because it’s pea-sized. But it will be blood-cell-size in 25 years, and we will be able to introduce it noninvasively.

Susan Cain – The power of introverts

Sometimes you watch a TED talk that really touch you. This talk by Susan Cain was one of those. Everything she said was so recognizable for my as an introvert.

I really recommend you to watch this 19 minute talk and then think about all the introverts in your life. How do you deal with them? Do you give them the space & silence they may need?

Top five regrets of the dying

Top five regrets of the dying

  1. I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.
  2. I wish I hadn’t worked so hard.
  3. I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.
  4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.
  5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.

Act now and change your world! Steve Jobs and Randy Pausch also have some inspirational words about life and priorities.