Human Creativity Is the Ultimate Economic Resource

1. Human Creativity Is the Ultimate Economic Resource TEDx/Manchester VT/0622.13 Creativity/Tom Peters

2. On 22 June 2013, I had the privilege of acting as MC/host for a TEDx conference in Manchester VT—effectively, my home town. The chosen topic was creativity, and some 13 talks attacked the issue from every angle imaginable. I attempted to set the context—and chose to do so along economic lines. Call it:Creativity: NO OPTION.What follows, very lightly annotated, is an expanded version of that context-setting overview.

3. “Human creativity is the ultimate economic resource.”—Richard Florida

4. As robotics, algorithmic determinism, the outsourcing-of-everything, and the like swoop down upon us, creativity becomes evermore important. Why? To exaggerate only slightly, there’s nothing else left to add value and create jobs for a high-wage nation.The quote comes via urban studies and economics guru Richard Florida.

5. "Creativity can no longer be treated as an elective.”—John Maeda

6. Rhode Island School of Design/RISD President John Maeda sings from the same hymnal.

7. The Great Restructuring

8. “The root of our problem is not that we’re in a Great Recession or a Great Stagnation, but rather that we are in the early throes of a Great Restructuring. Our technologies are racing ahead, but our skills and organizations are lagging behind.” Source: Race AGAINST the Machine, Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee

9. No book, in my opinion, captures the saga better than Race Against the Machine. As the quote suggests—we are in the midst of a profound change that dwarfs a cyclical economic downturn, even one as big as the 20007+ dislocation.

10. “The median worker is losing the race against the machine.”—Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, The Race Against the Machine

11. There could be little worse news.

12. +400,000*/-2,000,000**“new computing technologies that destroy middle-class [white-collar] jobs even as they create jobs for highly skilled workers who can exploit them”*Manufacturing jobsadded USA 2007-2012**White-collar jobs lostUSA 2007-2012Source: Financial Times, page 1, 0402.13 (“Clerical Staff Bears Brunt of US Jobs Crisis”)

13. Manufacturing is not at the heart of the problem—the loss of white-collar jobs, which employ about 80% of us, is the biggest of big deals.

14. Post-Great Recession: Equipment expenditures +26%; payrolls flat Source: Race AGAINST the Machine, Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee

15. Post-Great Recession: Equipment expenditures +26%; payrolls flat/ “Great Recession … lack of hiring rather than increase in layoffs”/“… breakage of the historic link between value creation and job creation” The “U-shaped Curve” Phenomenon: High-skilled Waaaaay Up!!! Low-skilled: Stable/Up Middle: Down/Down/Down Source: Race AGAINST the Machine, Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee

16. As the technology races ahead, so does investment—but not in the workforce.

17. 40 Years: Median inflation adjusted wages, men 30-50 with jobs, 1969-2009: $33K, -27% Source: “The Slow Disappearance of the American Working Man,” Bloomberg Businessweek/08.11.13

18. Men are particularly getting clobbered.

19. Multiple Choice Examination • You will you lose your job to; • choose one … • An offshore contractor? • A computer? (White collar) • A robot? (Blue collar) • Source: Adapted from Dan Pink

20. Close to the truth!

21. “The prospect of contracting a gofer on an a la carte basis is enticing.For instance, wouldn’t it be convenient if I could outsource someone to write a paragraph here, explaining the history of outsourcing in America? Good idea! I went ahead and commissioned just such a paragraph from Get Friday, a ‘virtual personal assistant-firm based in Bangalore. … The paragraph arrived in my in-box ten days after I ordered it. It was 1,356 words. There is a bibliography with eleven sources. … At $14 an hour for seven hours of work, the cost came to $98. …”—Patricia Marx, “Outsource Yourself,” the New Yorker, 01.14.2013(Marx describes in detail contracting out everything associated with hosting her book club—including the provision of “witty” comments on Proust, since she hadn’t had time to read the book—excellent comments only set her back $5;the writer/contractor turned out to be a 14-year-old girl from New Jersey.)

22. It would be funny if it weren’t so serious. Yes, outsource everything. Even “witty” notes on Proust for your upcoming book club meeting—when you’re too busy to do the reading. And, yes, the Proustian note writer turns out to be a … 14-year-old girl.

23. China too/Foxconn: 1,000,000 robots in next 3 years Source: Race AGAINST the Machine, Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee

24. Think China and you probably think “low wages.” Well, Chinese total manufacturing costs are now 93% of ours—but wait, the Chinese are moving up the ladder and automating as fast as we are. One company, one million robots … in just the next three years.

25. “I believe that ninety percent of white-collar jobs in the U.S. will be either destroyed or altered beyond recognition in the next 10 to 15 years.”—TJP/Time cover/0502.13

26. Guess I’m boasting, but I seem to have seen this coming.

27. The Women’s Century

28. Bachelor’s degree, age 25-34: 40% F; 30% M Graduate degree students: 60% F; 40% M Source: Sydney Morning Herald /26.03.12

29. Women are grabbing the degrees and, in general, they’re way ahead educationally. Industries—e.g., healthcare, education—ticketed for growth are dominated by women. Etc. Etc.

30. “I speak to you with a feminine voice. It’s the voice of democracy, of equality. I am certain, ladies and gentlemen, that this will be the women’s century. In the Portuguese language, words such as life, soul, and hope are of the feminine gender, as are other words like courage and sincerity.” —President Dilma Rousseff of Brazil, 1st woman to keynote the UN General Assembly

31. Odds are high …

32. How Algorithms Came to Rule the World

33. “Algorithms have already written symphonies as moving as those composed by Beethoven, picked through legalese with the deftness of a senior law partner, diagnosed patients with more accuracy than a doctor, written news articles with the smooth hand of a seasonedreporter, and driven vehicles on urban highways with far better control than a human driver.” From: Christopher Steiner, Automate This: How Algorithms Came to Rule the World

34. Read the book. Make your own judgment.

35. Legal industry/Pattern Recognition/Discovery (e-discovery algorithms): 500 lawyers to … ONE Source: Race AGAINST the Machine, Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee

36. First, the software replaced the lower-wage jobs. Now it’s rapidly* invading (and making inroads) the high-wage arenas. *The acceleration of tech change is unprecedented—so much faster than, say, the Industrial Revolution.

37. StatsMonkey: Sports writing (Readers cannot tell difference) Source: Race AGAINST the Machine, Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee

38. “Software Seen Giving Grades on Essay Tests” —Headline, p 1, New York Times /0405.13

39. Etc. …

40. “ … Which haiku are human writing and which are from a group of bits? Sampling centuries of haiku, devising rules, spotting patterns, and inventing ways to inject originality, Annie [algorithm] took to the short Japanese sets of prose the same way all of [Prof David] Cope’s. algorithms tackled classical music. ‘In the end, it’s just layers and layers of binary math, he says. … Cope says Annie’spenchantfortastefuloriginality could push her past most human composers who simply build on work of the past., which, in turn, was built on older works. …” —Christopher Steiner, Automate This: How Algorithms Came to Rule the World

41. Uh, creativity anyone????

42. “In some sense you can argue that the science fiction scenario is already starting to happen. The computers are in control. We just live in their world.”—Danny Hillis, Thinking Machines

43. Extreme? Perhaps. Perhaps not. Surely was true of the financial market crash to a significant degree; the powers that be didn’t understand the power of the instruments their geeks had created.

44. GRINning All the Way

45. GeneticsRoboticsInformaticsNanotechnology

46. And we really … ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

47. Fab Labs/Fabrication Labs/Fabulous Labs/digital fabrication machine/parts themselves are digitalized/3-D printer/MIT Center for Bits and Atoms/ Prof Neil Gershenfeld/ $5K: “large-format computer-controlled milling machine can make all the parts in an IKEA flat-pack box” customized for the individual/Etc./Etc. Source: “How to Make Almost Anything, Beil Gershenfeld, Foreign Affairs/11-12.2012

48. 3D printing may cause yet another revolution.

49. All Human Beings Are Entrepreneurs

50. “We are in no danger of running out of new combinations to try. Even if technology froze today, we have more possible ways of configuring the different applications, machines, tasks, and distribution channels to create new processes and products than we could ever exhaust.”—Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, Race Against the Machine: How the Digital Revolution Is Accelerating Innovation, Driving Productivity and Irreversibly Transforming Employment and the Economy