Chapter Index 00:00 | Intro 00:25 | Chapter Begins 01:58 | 1.1 Support Open Source Projects 14:34 | 1.2 Vote With Your Wallet (Not What You Think) 16:30 | 1.3 Work Less, Be Self-Employed 23:36 | 1.4 Don't Be A Dick 28:07 | Outro References This quote is attributed to Peter Drucker, but many people expressed similar ideas – Alan Curtis Kay at a 1971 meeting of PARC said: “The best way to predict the future is to invent it”. More recently, Peter Diamandis is famous for his phrase: “The best way to...
May 10, 2019•30 min
Chapter Index 00:00 | Intro 00:25 | Chapter Begins 01:12 | 1.1 Need Less, Live More 08:56 | 1.2 Educate yourself 32:35 | 1.3 Educate Others 33:28 | 1.4 Grow Your Own Food 37:38 | 1.5 Eat Less Meat 43:05 | 1.6 Hungry, Hungry Houses (Save Energy) 49:26 | 1.7 Make Your Own Energy 51:25 | 1.8 Ditch the Car 56:36 | Outro Figures Figure 1.1: A comic strip I did back in 2009 for Blog Action Day. Tables Green Tune-ups Payback Time Added cost Annual savings 10-year savings ROI 1.2 years $1,320 $1,136 $11...
May 03, 2019•58 min
Chapter Index 00:00 | Intro 00:25 | Chapter Begins 08:18 | Outro References The Essential 20: Twenty Components of an Excellent Health Care Team , Dianne Dukette and David Cornish, 2009. RoseDog Books. pp. 72-73. The New York Magazine Environmental Teach-In , Elizabeth Barlow, 30 March 1970. New York Magazine. p. 30. http://books.google.com/books?id=cccDAAAAMBAJ\&printsec=frontcover\#PPA30,M1 . Fuller was of course also an architect, an engineer, an author, a designer, a most notable systems...
Apr 26, 2019•10 min
Chapter Index 00:00 | Intro 00:25 | Chapter begins 10:13 | 1.1 Flow 15:41 | Outro Figures Figure 1.1: Life evaluation against working hours in OECD countries (2009). On the y-axis is percentage of people thriving, on the x-axis the average annual hours actually worked per worker. Happiness data comes from the Gallup World Poll 2005-2009 and working hours from the official OECD library. For an interactive version of the graph, click here . References For a survey, see Darity and Goldsmith, 1996. ...
Apr 19, 2019•17 min
Chapter Index 00:00 | Intro 00:25 | Chapter begins 05:04 | 1.1 Experience Simulations 13:56 | Outro References Adapted from Spike Milligan’s Money can’t buy you happiness but it does bring you a more pleasant form of misery and many other variations. http://thinkexist.com/quotation/money_can-t_buy_you_happiness_but_it_does_bring/220031.html This quote is supposedly attributed to Jim Carrey, but I could only find one mildly reputable source. Regardless, I think it is a great quote. http://goo.gl/...
Apr 12, 2019•16 min
Chapter Index 00:00 | Intro 00:25 | Chapter begins 08:26 | Outro Figures Figure 1.1: Subjective well-being (SWB), per capita gross domestic product (GDP), and different types of societies – Inglehart, Foa, Peterson, and Welzel (2008) References Economic Growth and Subjective Well-Being: Re-Assessing the Easterlin Paradox , Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers, 2008. Brookings Panel on Economic Activity. http://bpp.wharton.upenn.edu/betseys/papers/Happiness.pdf Income, Health, and Well-Being aroun...
Apr 05, 2019•10 min
Chapter Index 00:00 | Intro 00:25 | Chapter Begins 14:57 | Outro Figures Figure 1.1: Google Insights comparison of the search terms ‘economy’, ‘happiness’ and ‘GDP’ between 2008 and 2011. Figure 1.2: Comparing ‘happiness’ and ‘growth’ over time with n-grams. Courtesy of Google. Figure 1.3: GDP, economic growth, and happiness from 1940 to 2008. Courtesy of Google. References Quantitative Analysis of Culture Using Millions of Digitized Books , Jean-Baptiste Michel, Yuan Kui Shen, Aviva Presser Aid...
Mar 29, 2019•17 min
Chapter Index 00:00 | Intro 00:25 | Chapter Begins 04:31 | Outro References Adapted from an anonymous comment on Slashdot. http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=180945&cid=14970571 Attributions Chapter Text and comment section: Chapter 12: The Scorpion and the Frog | Robots Will Steal Your Job, But That's OK Theme song: The Freeharmonic Orchestra - RoboHobo Album art adapted by: Redd Spinks Copyright The Robots Will Steal Your Job, But That's OK Audiobook is released under a Creative Commons —...
Mar 22, 2019•6 min
Chapter Index 00:00 | Intro 00:25 | Chapter Begins 12:46 | Outro References A Treatise of the Laws of Nature , Richard Cumberland, 2005. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund. pp. 523-24. Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Book 2, Chapter 21, Section 51 , John Locke, 1690. Justifying America: The Declaration of Independence as a Rhetorical Document , Stephen Lucas in Thomas W. Benson, ed., American Rhetoric: Context and Criticism , 1989. City of Ruins , Chris Hedges, 2010. The Nation. http://www.thenati...
Mar 15, 2019•14 min
Chapter Index 00:00 | Intro 00:25 | Chapter Begins 04:32 | 1.1 Work Ethic, Work Utility 13:00 | Outro References Cluster munitions are prohibited for those nations that ratify the Convention on Cluster Munitions, adopted in Dublin, Ireland in May 2008. The Convention entered into force and became binding international law upon ratifying states on 1 August, 2010, six months after being ratified by 30 states; as of August 2011, a total of 108 states had signed the Convention and 60 of those have r...
Mar 08, 2019•15 min
Chapter Index 00:00 | Intro 00:25 | Chapter Begins 23:19 | Outro Figures Figure 1.1: Americans not in the labour force, by age, as of 2011. Image courtesy of CNN, data comes from the US Bureau Labor of Statistics. Tables Year Total Population Employed 2000 281,421,000 136,891,000 (48.6%) 2010 308,745,000 139,064,000 (45.0%) Table 1.1 : Total US workforce in between 2000 and 2010. Occupation Number of workers Percentage of workers% Driver/sales workers, bus and truck drivers 3,628,000 2.61% Retai...
Mar 01, 2019•25 min
Chapter Index 00:00 | Intro 00:25 | Chapter Begins 11:37 | Outro References INTERNET USAGE STATISTICS. The Internet Big Picture . World Internet Users and Population Stats. http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm Freedom on the Net 2011 – A Global Assessment of Internet and Digital Media Freedom , 2011. Freedom House. http://www.freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-net/freedom-net-2011 Internet censorship in the United States. Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_the_Uni...
Feb 22, 2019•13 min
Chapter Index 00:00:00 | Intro 00:00:25 | Chapter Begins 00:01:43 | 1.1 Automated Shopping 00:11:57 | 1.2 Automated Manufacturing 00:21:12 | 1.3 3d Printing 00:28:54 | 1.4 Automated Construction 00:32:21 | 1.5 Automated Journalism 00:36:44 | 1.6 AI Assistants 00:45:33 | 1.7 Autonomous Vehicles 00:49:24 | 1.8 A (Possible) History of Self-Driving Cars 00:58:46 | Outro Figures Figure 1.1: The replicator in Star Trek creating a coffee mug. Figure 1.2: The “Replicator”, an inexpensive 3D printer that...
Feb 15, 2019•1 hr
Chapter Index 00:00 | Intro 00:25 | Chapter Begins 05:47 | 1.1 Smarter, Better, Faster, Stronger 08:05 | 1.2 It's All About the Algorithms 12:48 | Outro Figures Figure 1.1: Front page of Google Images. You can see the camera icon on the right of the bar, click that and you can upload your image. Figure 1.2: I upload my image, named “guess-what-this.is.jpg” Figure 1.3: The software correctly recognises it as the Robot ASIMO by Honda, and offers similar images in return. Notice that the proposed i...
Feb 08, 2019•14 min
Chapter Index 00:00 | Intro 00:25 | Chapter Begins 06:26 | Outro References The Chinese room is a thought experiment presented by John Searle. It supposes that there is a program that gives a computer the ability to carry on an intelligent conversation in written Chinese. If the program is given to someone who speaks only English to execute the instructions of the program by hand, then in theory, the English speaker would also be able to carry on a conversation in written Chinese. However, the E...
Feb 01, 2019•8 min
Chapter Index 00:00 | Intro 00:25 | Chapter Begins 08:50 | Outro Figures Figure 1.1: The difference between a Linear and an Exponential curve. Courtesy of Ray Kurzweil. Figure 1.2: The Exponential Growth of computing power over the last 110 years. Courtesy of Ray Kurzweil. References Cramming more components onto integrated circuits , Gordon E. Moore, 1965. Electronics Magazine. p. 4. http://download.intel.com/museum/Moores_Law/Articles-Press_Releases/Gordon_Moore_1965_Article.pdf The Law of Acc...
Jan 25, 2019•10 min
Chapter Index 00:00 | Intro 00:25 | Chapter Begins 05:58 | 1.1 Explosive Power 12:33 | Outro Figures Figure 1.1: Top left, it begins with 1 grain. It goes on to the right with 2, 4, 8, 16... then numbers grow too big, we start to use the binary notation: K=kilo (1 thousand), M = Mega (1 million), G = Giga (1 billion), T = Tera (1 trillion), P = Peta (1 quadrillion), E = Exa (1 quintillion). Figure 1.2: On the left, at minute zero, there are no bacteria in the glass. On the right, after a certain...
Jan 18, 2019•14 min
Chapter Index 00:00 | Intro 00:25 | Chapter Begins 09:07 | Outro References The Skilled Labourer 1760-1832 , Hammond, J.L.; Hammond, Barbara, 1919. London: Longmans, Green and co.; p. 259. http://www.archive.org/details/skilledlabourer00hammiala Difference Engine: Luddite legacy , 2011. The Economist. http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2011/11/artificial-intelligence Productivity and unemployment , 2003. Marginal Revolution. http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2003/12/produc...
Jan 11, 2019
Chapter Index 00:00 | Intro 00:25 | Chapter Begins 11:00 | Outro Figures Figure 1.1: Average Household Income Figure 1.2: Change in share of income 1979-2007, calculated after taxes. Figure 1.3: Building a Better America – One Wealth Quintile at a Time , Michael I. Norton, Dan Ariely. Journal Perspectives on Psychological Science. References US Posts Stronger Solid Growth in July , Mokoto Rich, 2011. The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/06/business/economy/us-posts-solid-job-gains-...
Jan 04, 2019
Chapter Index 00:00 | Opening 00:15 | Administrative Stuff 02:31 | Introduction Attributions Chapter Text and comment section: Introduction—Robots Will Steal Your Job But That's OK | Robots Will Steal Your Job, But That's OK Theme song: The Freeharmonic Orchestra - RoboHobo Album art adapted by: Redd Spinks Copyright The Robots Will Steal Your Job, But That's OK Audiobook is released under a Creative Commons — Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license. Feel free to use any or all...
Dec 28, 2018
