The past days have been very inspiring on many levels. First, we had a Silicon Valley inspiration Tour focusing on innovation and automotive that brought us to companies such as Uber, Tesla, Audi, eMotorWorks, Atieva, German Accelerator, Techshop, SAP, Singularity University, Huami and many others, in total 20+ companies, shakers, and makers. Thanks to all our contacts and friends who gave us their time. We've also seen a dozen self-driving cars on the road and one in the museum. Take a peak into one with the video that I made. GM's self-driving cars are in SF, Google's in Mountain View. It's humbling and exciting at the same time to see how much work is going on and how fast our life will change.
Second, the Maker Faire took place in San Mateo with over 900 vendors and 130,000+ visitors, of which half of them were kids. And many many exhibitors were kids as well, presenting their projects. Watching them gives you an understanding of the future workplaces. Robots, drones: our kids will be creating a whole new world. Leaving the Maker Faire after 4 positively exhausting hours gives you one thing: hope for humanity and the wish to have more time to be part of that all. What I liked most there was the PancakeBot (watch the video). Also get a taste of the faire with that little video. And for the less squeamish: a drone battle!
TESTERS FOR LANGUAGE APP NEEDED
A friend of mine is launching a new language learning app and needs testers. If you are interested in learning English in 5 words per day to increase your professional vocabulary, sign up for the Beta here. I am also an advisor for the startup, so we'd really appreciate if you can spend the time and give feedback.
The adjacent possible is like walking from one room to the next. Most of our innovation is like that. It's in the air. Building blocks are added and everyone has them at hand. They are just waiting to be combined. Often several innovators and companies come up with similar approaches within a short time without knowing of the others' efforts. And that's not a new phenomenon. In the 1922 two researchers from Columbia University found over 100 occasions where independent from each other people had found similar solutions. And they were across continents or countries. The telephone is one of these examples. And the list goes on.
Why are self-driving cars so ugly? This is the wrong questions, we should actually ask, why human-driven cars are looking so threatening? Here we see the shift in the mindset. A human driver in a hot rod revving the engines? Cool guy - or douchebag, depending on your point of view. In an egg-shaped Google self-driving car? The same guy looks ridiculous. But what if the same hot rod is controlled by a machine and revs the machine? We get scared. And this opens an interesting discussion on how machines have to look like so that we are not afraid of them and accept the technology. More about that in my article Why are self-driving cars so ugly?
What politicians, society, or labor unions are not understanding is that the world of work is changing rapidly. In the US 4 out of 10 people will be freelancers. The traditional model of jobs here, companies there and the ensuing labor laws and regulation are more and more turning into a thing of the 19th century unfit for the realities of the 21st centuries. And that comes on top of the robotics and AI revolution that will make many types of jobs go away. Even highly qualified and seemingly secure jobs such as software programmers will go away But as with every tectonic shift there will also be a lot of new jobs created.
To experience yourself what the Silicon Valley does right about innovation and what the latest trends are, join our Silicon Valley Inspiration Tours that give you multi-day deep dives into the San Francisco Bay Area. See more tour details here. Here is also a list of preparatory steps for your visit.
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NSFW - How Far Can We Go? Limits of Humanity.
Today's NSFW - internet lingo for Not Safe For Work - answers the question how far humans can go in the universe. My interest in this topic was piqued by a book from theoretical physicist and NY Times bestselling author Lawrence M. Kraus titled A Universe from Nothing: Why there is something rather than nothing. The book is intense and also what we know about the universe and its expansion (that is actually accelerating). Now this little animated and entertaining video accurately summarizes the book in less than 8 minutes - and I think this is the right video for you over a long weekend.
