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How Innovators predicted our future and what we can learn from them | Thién D. Nguyen | TEDxTUBerlin


today’s topic is about escaping
standards do you want to know what my
brain thought when I heard that do weird
stuff to prove your point
right now you might be predicting my
future this guy is going to ruin this
outfit but I have signs on my side so
what’s actually happening here is that
the pressure inside this can by shaking
only increases slightly what actually
happens is that the air that is on top
of the can got distributed throughout
the can and due to some impurities on
the inside of the can some air bubbles
form if I released this ticking bomb
right now it’s a weird thing to say it
would be splashing all over the stage
ruining this carpet and everything but
there’s actually research about it if
you tap slightly all over this soda can
what I’m actually doing right now is
releasing these air bubbles going up so
that they don’t take all the soda with
them and it’s actually a little bit
tricky because I haven’t told anybody of
the organisers that I’m going to do this
and in my tests about 90% it worked but
[Music]
to predict the future
we actually must look into the past
future predictions are not just for
fortune tellers you dear audience also
have to make decisions for your own
future what should I write my fees is
about should I take this job in this
industry having a sense for the future
can really help you with those decisions
today I want to share with you a way to
develop a sense for the future
my name is Tian and I really love
building software products as we heard
today already creating a software
product and especially creating a great
one that actually solves a problem takes
a lot of time so you would have to know
so it’s best to know what the future
will look like how people are going to
live so I wanted to improve my skill in
this future prediction thing and what I
did was some research and while I did my
research I stumbled upon a cool story
that I would like to share with you
because it changed me from very arrogant
what’s the past to actually improve am
embracing it that’s today and we’re
going back for the story to 1899 this
video footage is actual footage from
1899 Paris the streets are crowded with
people
the main transportation method is the
horse here and there within the video
you will be able to spot one of these
new innovations the motorized car owning
one back then is the equivalent of
driving a Tesla today as you can see
people are walking around and as it’s
1899
people are preparing for the new century
France lifts grew a century of Wars and
revolutions and they had an image
problem that they wanted to solve and
what did they do they wanted to host the
Exposition Universelle b-word Fair they
invited people all over the globe they
expected more than 50 million people to
come so around this event the task force
was created this task force was led by
normality and their task was to imagine
the future in 2000 and draw it this
future into drawings unfortunately due
to financial distress the pictures were
not published back then only 80 years
later a science fiction writer found
them and published them I have them here
for you today I find them very powerful
because on the one hand it shows the
time that they were predicting and we
actually live in this time on the other
hand it shows a lot of hopes and dreams
the people had back then about how the
future will look like so let’s start
as you can see clearly there’s a whale
that’s carrying around people in a
so-called whale bus I looked at that
picture and of course I laughed at the
beginning but then I tried to figure out
hmm if we know retro perspectively how
everything turned out to be how can we
look at all those pictures and figure
out if there were any indicators back
then already to show that this won’t
come true and I came to the conclusion
that you can look at two different
things to figure that out
the first one is research and science
in this picture for example you can look
at how the domestication of whales was
back then how the signs about it was
people dried but there were no signs of
successful attempts the second point is
the need for it as we know today we
don’t have we didn’t have to move into
the oceans yet and but what we can say
retro perspectively
is that if you look closer at the
science they tried to conquer the oceans
but with machines which ultimately led
to the submarine go to the next one
those are aerial fireman 1900 was a big
year for aerial history because the
Wright brothers were working on it the
first flights were tried and so a lot of
pictures from that time are about
conquering the air regarding the need
fires were still one of the greatest
threats to cities to be destroyed so
there was a high need for it but if you
see it today
it didn’t make too much sense to send
people alone up there but with those
machines that were created afterwards we
could do that this is a great one they
nailed it so you have a farmer there
working on his buttons to Lois field and
regarding the science of Agriculture
agriculture was was with humanity
almost 10,000 years and it was very
important for Humanity to feed the
people and as you can imagine from this
if many people work on a problem that is
really needed by the humanity by
humanity
come to faster conclusions and so they
steadily improved this process and today
Pharma can feed more than hundred 150
people per Pharma and back then it was
just for that ones also great electric
scrubbing
I find that so amusing because you can
order some of them today on the internet
and they don’t even need human operation
but let’s leave the event to a great
quote from this man Nikola Tesla he said
in a magazine we shall be able to
communicate with one another
instantly irrespective of distance not
only this but through television and
telephony we shall see and hear one
another as perfectly as though we were
face to face despite intervening
distances of thousands of miles that’s
really great because as this event is
filmed life people can watch all over
the world be speaking here also he
describes a device that is very simple
with this technology and a man will be
able to carry one in his vest pocket you
can of course think of the device that
is in your pocket which is not a vest
but in your trousers to make a point
regarding Tesla today we know of course
he was one of the leading scientists of
his time in you are the research papers
and working with electricity was on the
edge of technology also as because he
was a businessman he tended to ask
people what they needed I know both
things and in a sense you could say he
what can we take from this talk except
this party trick from the beginning I
wanted to show you these pictures to
give you some perspective
and escape your thoughts about the
future I want to give you some tools as
well so for the research of course as
there are a lot of students here in this
audience
there are many platforms that host the
latest science and publications and you
can just look them up if you’re
interested in predicting if a topic in a
certain field just look up the science
do the research regarding the need is
also a tool today in 2018 we are
searching for everything on search
engines this data is really interesting
because people put their needs and
desires in these tiny boxes and enter
them onto a server who will actually
allows you to look up this data and see
it in comparison for example here you
can see two graphs even seasonal that if
you compare swimming with ski swim with
ski you can see that in the winters
people are searching for skis and in the
summers they are searching for swim if
you take my examples here and water
transportation is even on this map lying
fireman is at zero but from robots are
in pretty high demand so next time if
someone wants to tell you something
about the future or you want to think
about the future ask yourself if it’s a whale bus or a farm robot thank you
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